A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - The Blogger's Book Club

Lily over at her blog has started a virtual Book Club for bloggers, and I was delighted to join up as I am a sucker for a good read and it would nicely doevtail with my real world book club. The only problem is I've got off to a very bad start as I'm running late with this review which I was supposed to have done for today Easter Sunday noon, but I just didn't get organised enough to fit it in. My excuses - the family all round for Easter weekend and working right up to 5pm on Good Friday. (So much for the perception of all public servants having a doddle of a day off on every single holiday - well not this public health nurse!)

So I won't burden you with any more excuses except to say to the other book club members in cyberspace - thanks for dropping by - if you do - and hope you all enjoyed the book too. I have no idea what format your reviews took but I figured to link to Lily's blog and the rest of the current list of Book Club members (highlighted on Lily's post here) I know about would suffice, as well as a notification to Lily on her blog as the host which is courteous at the least.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I have to confess thinking that this would be an easy book to review as I had already read it two years ago and actually have it in hardback. I bought it for our holiday to Spain when our eldest son lived there, and in the days when you could actually include books in your luggage without being charged punitive excess baggage fees for every gram the meagre 15kg allowance and before the rule of one piece of hand baggage was strictly enforced.

Back in those halcyon days my hand baggage consisted of a large African Kikapu - a woven grass basket of the sort used by the local women to bring their produce to the market and which you can buy in most Farmers' Markets in Ireland and certainly in Spanish weekly markets. Into this kikapu I would put all my books and the airport shopping of Tayto crisp 18-packs, Lyon's Tea, and Butlers or Lily O'Briens Chocolates as well as some Denny's rashers and sausages. I guess the now-strictly-enforced rules at departure have put paid to all that largesse and now I am squeezing everything into a tiny little sport bag of specified size, including my handbag and all the books have to be rationed.

In any case it wasn't that easy to review, as I had to skim it again to trigger recall, but it all came flooding back, and I remembered that I was wary of it initially as I thought it wouldn't be as good as The Kite Runner which I loved - we had read The Kite Runner for our local Book Club in Lismore and it was a firm favourite - long before the film came out - and I'd read and heard of this second book and broached it with some trepidation

It was just as harrowing if not more so in many ways. The relationships between the women Mariam and Laila are beautifully portrayed, and the attitude to women in general in Afghan society would make anyone weep. It is a brave book to detail the day-to-day lives of the rural society over a half-century of contemporary Afghanistan and it gives a great historical context to the country's woes that resonate today. I thought the violence was harrowing and wonder how women the world over can cope with such domestic brutality, and none of us can hold the moral high ground as it is pervasive in every society, so-called "civilised" Western ones as well as traditional ones - it is not peculiar to Islam or any faith, and it seems to be a part of the larger opression of women that has been entrenched in law and religion since recorded history began.

There was great love and gentleness in the book, and the maternal love's intensity was well drawn. The resilience of humanity shows through in the way people cope with living in such restricted confinement and yet that is so hard for us in the West to grasp, how women in largely female groupings like harems make life tolerable - not that I wouldn't wish it were different as the lack of choice is the key to the oppression - but I think we underestimate their strength of character at our peril.

Preconceptions go out the window I think - having lived in a traditional Islamic society which was then quite secular - Bangladesh under the martial law era of the late 70s - I witnessed first-hand how wonderfully strong the women were. They were living lives that we would surely see as appallingly oppressed and yet they were fantastically caring mothers - something that shines through in this book too -and they had a great support network of friends and family - and when given the chance were far more capable of managing their finances than would have been thought. These were the women for whom the Grameen Bank was made and who made it in turn such a success that its founder Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

I seem to have digressed all over the place in this review - apologies for that as I am trying to make the deadline before Easter Monday dawns - and I will be more vigilant in future reviews. I take a pragmatic approach to reviews in general - for our local book club we are not very formal and don't prepare written reviews, rather let an organic discussion evolve which is usually very enlightening and generates great debate and passion. I hope this Blogger's Book Club (Acronym notwithstanding!) can do likewise and thanks a lot to Lily for coming up with the idea.

The other members of the Blogger's Book Club

I will link to the other current members' blogs here: Marian at Made Marian, Treasa at Irish Mammy on the Run, Kathy at Rumble Strips, Marie at Diary of a Country Wife, Kirsty at The Road Less Travelled, Val at Magnum Lady, Jen at SmurfetteJens, Edie at Munchies and Musings, Steph at The Biopsy Report and Susan at Queen of Pots

To end - if any of my blog followers/readers who are occasional or avid bookworms would like to join up with this virtual Blogger's Bookclub - please do so, you are very welcome and just sign up with myself or go on over to Lily's blog and tell her.