And the Mountains Echoed

Whereas “The Kite Runner” focused on the dynamic between fathers and sons, and “Splendid Suns” on that between mothers and daughters, this novel tells its story through the prism of sibling relationships — a theme refracted through the lives of several pairs of brothers and sisters.

Novel’s two central characters are Abdullah and his beloved sister, Pari. He has taken care of her since their mother died giving birth to her. Her father allowed the Wahdatis, a healthy couple to adopt her and eventually taken by her half-French mother, a poet, to live in Paris. Abdullah ends up in California, running a restaurant.

I feel like the author could have dedicated more pages developing and telling the story of the characters we already got to know rather than introducing new, unnecessary ones halfway through the book. It was a bit of a struggle finishing it, I had lost interest somewhere in the middle. Too many disparate characters and too many shifts in time and place made this book a bit disjointed. I loved The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, but Hosseini just missed the mark with this one.