And the Mountains Echoed

Here's the third book from Khaled Hosseini, the Afghan-born doctor-turned-writer responsible for The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Those two books focused, broadly, on father-son relationships and mother-daughter relationships, respectively. Here in And the Mountains Echoed, Hosseini has taken a stab at exploring the ties that bind siblings to one another.

This 400-page book is nominally a novel, but in truth it's a collection of nine different short stories that intertwine in different places. It takes place not just in Afghanistan, but also in France and America, across seventy years. Each of the book's nine chapters was told from a different point of view. The result, at least for me, was a book that ended up being less than the sum of its parts. The scope and breadth here were impressive, but no character or story was given any real prominence here. That doesn't mean the stories weren't all impressive on an individual level - sad, tragic, uplifting, cynical, enlightening, you name it - but just that they didn't combine thematically or plot-wise into something more for me. Which is fine!

Honestly, Hosseini's writing has gotten a bit formulaic for me by now - which is also fine! Beyond taking place in Afghanistan, all of his work seems to feature elements like wealth gaps, codependent relationships, life-altering accidents, redemption arcs, and adoption. Most of the time, when his characters start out with some kind of advantage - wealth, beauty, power, intelligence, for instance - they'll have the tables turned on them and have to learn to cope with new circumstances. The man is still an effective storyteller - I'm just familiar with his tricks now.

The nine chapters really varied, not so much in quality but in tone and message. None were particularly bad or boring, but some stayed with me in ways others didn't. My favorite involved two cousins who had emigrated to America, visiting Afghanistan after the war. One cousin loved to throw his money around and show off his generosity, while the other quietly judged him for it and preferred making deeper connections with individual people. The conclusion was a real gut punch, but it was so satisfyingly realistic. Another story that stuck with me involved a man who fell in love with his master's young and beautiful wife. He had an opportunity to follow her when she left her husband one night and fled the country, but instead he stayed behind, ultimately becoming the man's caretaker for several ensuing decades. Lastly, the book's final chapter picked up on the thread left behind by the first chapter, and gave a very bittersweet conclusion to two separated siblings after close to seventy years.

These stories and all the rest were touching and enjoyable, but collectively they didn't really compliment one another. There was no impeccably woven tapestry by the end of this book as much as there were several different strands only loosely tied together. The stories all work - truly, there isn't a dud in the bunch - but collectively they make for a shallower novel than Hosseini's previous two efforts. I'm still glad that I read it, and I'd likely be back for more if he decided to write a fourth book one day.