And The Mountains Echoed - A Review

Abdullah and Pari. Idris and Timur. Nabi and Wahdati. Parwana and the twin sister. And I swear there's at least one more side story that I'm missing here.

And The Mountains Echoed by Hosseini takes the readers back to the sunny rogue lands of Afghanistan only to tour Europe and US later. It tells us the stories of siblings and their complicated relationships, which for all the sane reasons seemed way too forced and artificially built up.

Around six side stories introduces the readers to how six different pairs of people can be siblings in six different ways.

Hmm, she is my friend. And we aren't related by blood, but know what, she's my sister!

Well, he is technically my cousin, but he is as close as a brother to me. Fyi, I hate him though.

She's my twin!

He's my employer and am his driver. Uh, we could be siblings eh?

One could sense the efforts that the author had taken to bring in as many ways that two ppl can be thought of as siblings as possible. And this punctures the essence of the book. A million side stories doesn't do justice to any of them through poor character development.

As much as Kite Runner and TSS made us fall in love with the characters and root for them, I dozed off thrice before trying to go through a chapter here. I missed the intense and raw emotions. The book was lined and written but sadly not fleshed out.

Though I suffered the intense emotional trauma that his earlier books left me in, I enjoyed them for the story-line coherence and painstakingly intricate character development. None of which are found in this. Maybe it was an unintentional flaw that came out of the multiple plots - but which was blaring enough to be disappointed.


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