4 Stars for A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. It is told from two perspectives. The first is Mariam, a young girl in the 1960s, given away in marriage at fourteen to a much older man named Rasheed. The second perspective is, Laila, who grows up down the street from Rasheed and Mariam. Laila, a young, educated girl from a loving family contrast Mariam’s. For example, Laila can choose her husband and continue her education.

Unfortunately, and due to tragic circumstances, Laila’s and Mariam’s background become the same, one without choice. The theme of women’s rights becomes central to the novel. While the limited choices of Mariam and Laila in Afghanistan minutely compare to my own background which consisted of unlimited educational choices while growing up in the United States; I can still relate on some level.

Being a woman who grew up in the South, where a ‘women’s work’ has often been considered those occupations that didn’t involve a formal education, like housecleaning, child rearing, and husband pleasing, this story had a certain resonation with me. Although my experiences did not consist of the hardships Mariam and Laila faced like having the H double Hockey sticks beat out of me, my experiences did involve circumstances that involve kitchen work, while the men folk watched a dang good baseball game. For the record, I love baseball too! I also love my husband and doing things to help him. Ladies, I still wash his shirts and make sure they are wrinkle free, but on the flip side he responds with things like Friday night sushi.

Despite some strong differences between my background and that of Laila and Mariam, I related these women to very real people in my own life, which is why I found the huge criticism of un-fleshed characterization to be wrong. Mariam’s initial dislike for Laila is easily understood through an older generation of women folk I know that twist the idea of ‘stand by your man’ to mean standing while being beaten, cheated upon, or otherwise disrespected through verbal abuse. Clearly Mariam should have liked Laila and hated Rasheed and a one-dimensional character would have these feelings, a more complex character would not have.

Laila’s dream to be independent reminds me less of a Cinderella stock character and more of Pocahontas. In both Laila and Mariam there is nothing one-dimensional and they are borderline three-dimensional, so I partially agree with The New York Times review describing these women as fairy tale, but it is still unfair simply because the reasons women stay in abusive relationships is never simple, or primary-colored.

Further, this is not a story necessarily about good characterization, like Hosseini’s Kite Runner it is about story, and the mystery behind how these so-called one-dimensional characters can free themselves from nasty circumstance. E.M. Forster’s Aspect of a Novel focuses on the importance of mystery to create a story worth reading. The mystery of how Laila and Mariam’s life turns out is why I kept reading and it is why I highly recommend reading it to others. 

5 Stars for Losing It by Cora Carmack

Losing It by Cora Carmack is a comical, romantic light read for those of us looking for a break from dark, profound classical literature. I teach high school English, so books like The Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet, and the bloody aftermath of The Odyssey can leave a person begging for some shrapnel of hopeful bliss, ironic, Bliss is the name of the protagonist in the story. She is complete with a Cinderella meet Velma’s Scooby Doo overthinking romantic attitude. “Yes, that is masterful.” – Velma.

I found Bliss charming, a virgin determined, and yet not so willing to lose her V-card to a British guy who reads Shakespeare to her on their first awkward, almost hookup where she leaves Mr. British accent in her bed naked while she runs out on him. The plot line is funny, no not completely original, but still complete and without holes. It didn’t leave me pondering the world, and my place in it, but it did what it was designed to do. The writing was solid for this New Adult strategy, balancing active and passive voice, limited descriptive, except in the steamier moments, and dialogue that resonated with its audience.

The premise is not an original one, but it is one that never grows weary and it has – Spoiler Alert… a happier ending than Romeo and Juliet. Bravo! I recommend Losing It to all ladies, young and old looking for a light romantic story with an edge of steam that will make you laugh and appreciate love without power played Shades of Grey props that seem entirely unnecessary.  

Five Stars for The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner is the first novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. First published in 2003, and fifteen years later with enormous praise from academic colleagues, and well-read family members; I finally read it. It is worth the acclaim. The Kite Runner understands human dynamics and the cowardice often found beneath our motives with an honesty that stings our sense of justice causing us to reflect on our first inclination to cast the first stone.

The protagonist, Amir, carries mixed emotions, because his actions are those of a coward; however, Amir understands the difference between right and wrong. It is this understanding and Amir’s inner cowardice that makes him a dynamic, and beautifully flawed character. Hosseini created an authentic character with a universal understanding that dives into the selfish hearts of all of us and our need to be accepted and loved. This universal thread is transparent in every culture whether you are in white America, Egypt, Greece, Rome, or Afghanistan.

C.S. Lewis makes the point much more pointedly than I do in Mere Christianity, “Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to – whether it was only our family, or your fellow countrymen, or every one. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired.”

It is selfishness and the road to redemption that underlines this book, and it is one we all can relate. Yes, Kite Runner is loaded with foreshadowing, and predictability, but not in how redemption is achieved, at least not until the very end after the reader walks for years alongside of Amir. Oddly, Amir’s salvation and grace remind me of a very different kind of writer, and an old favorite of mine, Flannery O’Connor who achieves redemption in grotesque, and often murderous characters with a hint of dark humor. Her method, although different, is much the same.

Now about that foreshadowing, much of the criticism relating to The Kite Runner lashes out at foreshadowing. In my reading, I’ve come across two different kinds of foreshadowing: 1) direct and 2) indirect. Hosseini takes the direct approach, which for some reviewers may seem irksome. An example would be, "I thought of the life I had lived until the winter of 1975 came along and changed everything."

I want to know what happens in the winter of 1975. Slowly the reader realizes certain people and events shape this, but eventually the horrific outcome pressed against my soul making the foreshadowing obsolete, and a deeper search of myself the most important pressing matter. Further, foreshadowing, direct, is one used by the greats of literature, Shakespeare’s prologue to Romeo and Juliet is a flashing neon lights sign defining predictability. Again, it is the ‘how’ that guides you through the literature.

Homer’s Odyssey is another example, the song of the muse conveys Odysseus’s treacherous journey. Specifics of Odysseus’s journey are further foreshadowed by Circe, the witch goddess’s warning to Odysseus and his men. The prophecy of Tiresias tells of Odysseus’s return home, broken with no more than his wit to win.

The Great Gatsby, although, twisted with surprise, the elements of indirect foreshadowing are transparent once the end is revealed. The point is whether a story is predictable or surprising, it is the journey we should read for, the one that makes us examine our self at the end forgiving a character we may not have liked much throughout. The devastation Amir felt at the end of the story was justified in my mind, and my forgiveness came willingly because of this.

Journey and plot go together in this much like a Thomas Cole painting picturesque of light, nature and inner solitude. The story takes flight with a kite in the winter of 1975 with the need to be loved and accepted, and it ends years later with the willingness to love someone else, selfishness sliding away like a faded memory.

A critic once said, “This is the sort of book White America reads to feel wordly.” Maybe this is true for some. I cannot speak for all readers, but after reading a book set in Afghanistan before the communist and Taliban; it doesn’t make me worldlier; however, it does make me understand the universal need for love and acceptance that often motivates all of us into selfish action, and the similar journey we all take towards attornment. I highly recommend Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

4 Stars for The Story of Murder by Patrick Suskind

Perfume: The Story of Murder by Patrick Suskind

Summary:

Patrick Suskind’s classic novel is a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s smell becomes a passion so intense it leads him to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with a gift, an unusual keen sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to unravel the odors of Paris giving them a source. He later apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him to create the “ultimate perfume” It is the scent of a beautiful young virgin. In this obsession, Grenouille becomes a serial killer leading to the one girl who possesses the scent he wants to bottle. Perfume is a passionate, powerful tale of murder.

Review:

In Perfume, Patrick Suskind creates an original, unforgettable story about murder placing the reader in the precarious position of sympathizing with the killer, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. It is the same sympathy Vladimir Nabokov seems to want the reader to feel in his story, Lolita. A story about Humbert, a man who obsesses over a girl much too young for him. For myself, sympathy is a feeling of pity for another human being, with sympathy being measured on a scale of 1-10, ten being the highest level of sympathy.

Grenouille and Humbert get about a three from me, but it is enough to make me read their stories, and root for an outcome of ethical resolution. Humbert is not allowed to possess young Lolita, and Grenouille is not allowed to kill another human being specifically young virgins.

Grenouille is a fascinating character one could easily describe as moldy cheese delightful with green fuzz cut off his edges. With Grenouille, his specific genius and planning to create specific scents took on a magical quality that often changed the ugly person he felt he was born into; the moldy cheese. He could wear a scent that made him invisible, or loved. The intrigue of this kept the reader on the edge of each of his break throughs understanding and sympathizing with him at each turn he took, hoping for a compromising resolution.  

The plot twist leading to the climatic ending kept me guessing and hoping for Grenouille, and yet rooting against his deepest desire. Everything leading to this point in the book, the climax – worked; however, the ending strayed away from the believability set up in the initial exposition of the story. The ending is like the wind, who woos. It is inconstant personifying that which the reader has barely come to accept like how Grenouille can create his own scent.

The ending is a bit like a party after a self-discovery journey that should have led to the quiet tranquility of the outdoors. It simply did not work for me. But even though the ending did not work for me, the rest of the book did. It is a terrific twist on a murder which utilizes scent. The descriptive, setting, and characterization flavored this original tale placing the reader in each vivid scene. A must read, but be forewarned, it is not for the light of heart, but it is also not horribly creepy. It should be noted, I’ve never finished Lolita, too ethical, too sympathetic, too easily creeped out. 

5 Stars for Lost Moon

Summary: 

In April 1970, during the glory days of the Apollo space program, NASA sent Navy Captain Jim Lovell and two other astronauts on America's fifth mission to the moon. Only fifty-five hours into the flight of Apollo 13, disaster struck: a mysterious explosion rocked the ship, and soon its oxygen and power began draining away.

What begins as a smooth flight is transformed into a hair-raising voyage from the moment Lovell calls out, "Houston, we've got a problem." Minutes after the explosion, the astronauts are forced to abandon the main ship for the lunar module, a tiny craft designed to keep two men alive for just two days. But there are three men aboard, and they are four days from home. As the hours tick away, the narrative shifts from the crippled spacecraft to Mission Control, from engineers searching desperately for solutions to Lovell's wife and children praying for his safe return.

The entire nation watches as one crisis after another is met and overcome. By the time the ship splashes down in the Pacific, we understand why the heroic effort to rescue Lovell and his crew is considered by many to be NASA's finest hour.

Lost Moon is the true story of a thrilling adventure and an astonishing triumph over nearly impossible odds. It was a major Oscar(R)-nominated motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starred Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon.

Review:

On the outside, Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger tells story about three astronauts that almost didn’t make it back from space, but inside this book is the deeper story of a nation bent on beating another, creating a paranoia and fear beneath the umbrella of Communism and The Cold War. Russia started this cold competition with Sputnik, leading to greater space flights before we could catch up.

Russia lost its lead on July 20^th, 1969 when our Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Even if folks don’t know many of the details, most people know what Neil Armstrong said when his feet touched the moon – “That’s one small step for man, and one giant leap for man-kind.” After, Russia lost a craft on the moon and gave up. We won. The days that followed were the glory days of the Apollo space program. And then, disaster struck with Apollo 13. Astronauts Lovell, Swigert, and Haise lost oxygen due to an unexplained explosion.  

The next line we remember as a nation about the NASA space flights are Jim Lovell’s words, “Houston, we have a problem.” Now, in as much as heroism followed Armstrong when he landed on the moon and captivated plethora amounts of fans; we should also follow Lovell, Swigert and Haise. As these men continued to lose power and oxygen; they remained calm brainstorming solutions with Houston back home until they landed in the ocean back on earth.

Lost Moon is loaded with engineering jargon, which I admit took my literary mind more than a second to grasp tiny fragments of the engineering genius it took to get home, meanwhile oxygen levels minimalized. The understandable knowledge that held my attention revolved around the central idea held by the three men – oxygen levels could support two, not three of them, if they couldn’t figure a way to power home soon. This kind of deadline kept you reading.

The other information exposing the dangers of space flight to these astronauts/heroes happened prior to their flight. Not long before Lovell jumped aboard Apollo 13; he lost his friend Ed White to a fire that started in the cockpit of a rocket during training. Before I read this book, I took our incredible space flights for granted. They fell in line with a whole other list of heroic activities due surfeit amounts of respect and awe, but with my little understanding of the complications, problems and pure brilliance that made history.

Other than awakening a further understanding of space flight, Lost Moon, did a more than adequate job on the characterization of Jim Lovell. This book made him come to life with small details painting him human. For example, when Lovell was a kid he stumbled into a corporate office asking for potassium nitrate, Sulphur, and charcoal, so that he and his seventeen-year-old friends could build a rocket. Just so happens though, unless these three ingredients are packed right they create gunpowder - not rocket fuel.

This told me two things about Lovell making me root for him: 1) Lovell loved flying from an early age, and followed that dream. 2) Because Lovell didn’t know about the gunpowder, he had a lot to learn, and so he did. He played a massive part in saving his friends, Swigert and Haise, flying home in Apollo 13.

Five Stars for Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Summary:

The armies of Good and Evil are amassing, the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse are revving up their mighty hogs and hitting the road, and the world's last two remaining witch-finders are getting ready to fight the good fight, armed with awkwardly antiquated instructions and stick pins.

Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except that a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon -- each of whom has lived among Earth's mortals for many millennia and has grown rather fond of the lifestyle -- are not particularly looking forward to the coming Rapture.

If Crowley and Aziraphale are going to stop it from happening, they've got to find and kill the Antichrist (which is a shame, as he's a really nice kid). There's just one glitch: someone seems to have misplaced him. . . .

Review:

Two indisputable reasons to read Good Omens: 1. Laughter 2. Supernatural.

Good Omens made me laugh out loud. This type of occurrence happened with one other book: Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Good Omens like Confederacy of Dunces screams absurd stupidity. Picking up either of them on my own to read – impossible, not happening and all that; however, Good Omens reminded me of the TV show Supernatural, and I’m a huge fan, so maybe not so improbable.

Other reasons to read Good Omens:

1.      “It’s not enough to know what the future is, you have to know what it means.” In Good Omens the future is written in the Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, but it doesn’t exactly give you dates, times and places of the exact incidences. I was raised Southern Baptist, and nothing is more annoying than what C.S. Lewis calls the watered down Christian. The Christian who takes the biblical word at, well – its word.

2.       Good Omens answers pertinent questions like “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

3.       Campy catch phrases: “That’s how it goes, you think you’re on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you.”

4.       Because we are people …

“And weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow”

The fourth reason can be attested to by Rick Springfield when he played Lucifer on Supernatural. Those Springfield episodes bagged a lot of souls.

4 Stars for The Fireman by Joe Hill

Summary:

The fireman is coming. Stay cool.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.
Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin.

When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as

The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

Review:

After reading, Joe Hill's NOS4A2 and Heart Shaped Box, The Fireman fell short to high standards. The concept kept high marks, original, thought-provoking, and tantalizingly morbid for an apocalyptic book. Hill definitely carries his father's (Stephen King's) DNA when it comes to creative ideas. Unoriginally, disease and sickness from the flu to zombies paint the dim setting for the apocalyptic novel, but a disease carrying spore that burns its victims alive is different.

Hill did a nice job with characterization. Harley, the protagonist of the story became the kind of heroine the normal average American wanted to see win. Harley reeked with flaws on top of a grand liberal heart that wanted to save not just her own life, but every one else's.

Hill did a fascinating job creating  mystery around the Fireman before letting the reader into his heart. Other characters included children like Nick and Allie who showed incredible strength in the midst of paranoia, and hatred for their kind.

This book fell short in pacing. It was too long, and would often spend pages in pointless dialogue that did little to move the plot forward. For example, in one scene where the Fireman and Harley began to get to know each other better, several pages of dialogue followed on whether or not Harley was a Beatles, or a Stones girl.

Now, why this conversation is interesting, it did spend a lot of time away from the plot. I found myself skinning large sections in order to find out what happens next. This particular scene did enhance the characterization, but it fell towards the end of the book where the reader should have been already attached to the characters. The scene felt like it was more for the writer than the reader.

Would I recommend The Fireman by Joe Hill? Absolutely, if you don't mind skimming a bit to read interesting characters in a world bleeding with the fresh and profound.