Kite Runner Underwhelms

The Kite Runner is the first selection I have read for the book club I joined this year. I was pleased with the selection for a few reasons: 1) it's a book we have here at home, so I didn't have to buy it. 2) It seems like many of my friends have read and enjoyed it. 3) It is a best-selling novel that did not look like pure drivel. So I'm happy that book club will help me get out of reading ruts, but, as the following paragraphs will testify to, this novel did not do the trick for me.

Kite Runner is not a bad book, but one that fails to adequately grapple with the questions it raises. Hosseini is a talented writer--his prose feels natural and unfettered. I was initially excited to see the way the power relationships were going to play out--the servant and master both on an individual scale and in the realm of international politics. The stage certainly felt set for an exploration of class conflict. Our protagonist is one of the privileged few in Afganistan, but has a special relationship with the son of their family's servant. However, his inability to act in a moment of crisis--his inability to risk his place in the social order--lead to tragic results that haunt him into adulthood. By the same token, though the novel doesn't delve deeply into this, the Russians in the 1980s were a privileged nation, able to make Afganistan suffer on their behalf with few consequences.

However, the story suffers a serious breakdown in the second half, subsituting coincidences that are frankly unacceptable and abandoning characterization in favor of stereotype. We don't really get much insight into the cultural and social forces that drive out the Russians, but institute their own brand of militaristic and religious oppression. In this novel, the Taliban represent evil without any nuance--one particular antagonist even professes an admiration for Hitler. This is a transparent and desperate move on the part of Hosseini, who wants us to hate this charcter, but is apparently unwilling to give him the full scope of his humanity and instead resorts to this ridiculous shorthand. The end neatly wraps up the events without asking us to think very hard about what's happened in Afganistan and what is still happening. We are, conviently, also never asked to consider what, if any, role America has in the state of Afganistan today, and the ongoing American invasion is mentioned only in passing. We can go on sitting in Starbucks, reading the Post, and shaking our heads sadly at the state of Afgani affairs, safe from any impolite questions that the Kite Runner could have raised.

Kite Runner has some splendid moments, and is undoubtedly better than most of the fare that makes the bestseller lists. It's obviously better than many of the books I have written about on this site in the last few months, but considering its potential, the book is a real let-down. In the end, it is much less than the sum of it's parts.

P.S. For reasons unknown to me, this post will not publish showing the customary spaces between paragraphs--I will simply have to trust that my intrepid readers can ascertain where said breaks should go. Apologies.