Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Having read The Kite Runner a couple years ago, I expected Hosseini's second book to be just as searing.  What I was not prepared to face was how intensely A Thousand Splendid Suns would magnify my sense of justice and my passion to protect oppressed women of society.  Hosseini's descriptions of Afghan women, their strength, beauty, intelligence and endurance, provide a backdrop of depth humanzing the story for the American reader.  The faces behind the burq'as take definite, provocative forms under the strokes of the author's pen.  The fast-paced unraveling of the plot quickly drew me in so that I started the book one Friday afternoon and finished it the very next day after a 10-hour book binge.  I could not put it down.  Aside from a few stylistic melodramas, which I think were not unwarranted given the topic, the book's value is its immediacy in recent history.  Women today are facing these things in a very real and hostile world not so far away. Most importantly, this book set forth one of the most powerful expressions of sacrificial love that I have ever seen.  As a reader, I will treasure the truth of Laila and Miriam for a long time to come.  As a woman in Christ, I will seek to help other women live out their potential as the crown and glory of creation.
Cheers to Hosseini.  He created a work that moves his audience.  It makes me want to name my daughter Miriam someday.