The Kite runner, by Khaled Hosseini

Ophelia

[u] I can see that K Hosseini's next novel is a Booktalk official selection, I have scanned Booktalk archives and cannot find "The Kite". When I heard that the film's release had been posponed in order to ensure the young actors' safety, I remembered that the book had been sitting on my shelves, unread, for a few years. I remember thinking this looked like a story about kites .
The kites are both a realistic element of a boy's life in Kabul, and a symbol.
The book is about much, much more.[url]

http://www.amazon.com/Kite-Runner-Riverhead-Essential-Editions/dp/1594 481776/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196859842&sr=1-1[/url]

Mr. Pessimistic

Ophelia · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 11:17 am Post subject:

It's a long story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/movies/04kite.html

Ophelia

This reminds me of another (real) story, that of a 15-year-old french boy who was raped by three men in the United Arab Emirates.
One of the reasons which has made it very difficult to prosecute his aggressors is that the law in the UAE does not recognize male rape; the three men will be tried for "forced homosexuality".

[url]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/world/middleeast/01dubai.html?n=Top/ News/Health/Diseases,%20Conditions,%20and%20Health%20Topics/AIDS[url][ /url]

One more example, from literature, of (cultural?) inability to face (some) facts:

In The Prince of Tides , by Pat Conroy (1986) , the teenage male narrator is raped. When he tries to tell his mother, she answers that men cannot be raped (the family is Catholic and they live in South Carolina).

To end on a lighter note: I find it impossible to forget the novel (although I would find it hard to say whether I liked it), but I know for sure that the film by Barbara Streisand was very forgettable, and in my case instantly forgotten.

Mr. Pessimistic

Ophelia

I’d like to write about the book now. I felt carried away when reading it. The style is simple, sober (even though the story may be harrowing at times; everything rings true— and yet this is the first time I have read about Afghanistan from a male perspective.

First, for those of you who studied (or are studying) literature at university level, I was taught that you do not write about your impressions or feelings when you write about novels. Nor do you write a psychoanalysis of the characters. I still firmly hold that belief in the context of university or academia.

Now, rational analysis is a hard taskmaster, but for now I’ll just have a thought for the God (Goddess) of Literature, who is perhaps looking at me from up there, and has to be pacified (with an introduction).

How wonderfully convenient it is to have a link with amazon, so that this ground need not be covered again.

How encouraging it is to think I need not cover the whole book (all the more so is as this is a non-fiction forum and this book is not even in the fiction selection.) .
I’ll just choose two points, one of which is not even central to the story.

1- The theme of betrayal.

a- Amir betrays his friend Hassan from the beginning, by taking advantage and making fun of his friend’s lack of education, for example.

b- the central betrayal: Amir does nothing when Hassan is attacked and raped by the local bullies (this is not a graphic scene in the book, but it is a turning point. It cannot possibly be taken away in the film, although we can understand why the young –afghani- actor refused to play it).

In real life one would feel disinclined to blame Amir: he was young; perhaps his intervention wouldn’t have changed anything, perhaps he would have been assaulted too…

Yet the novel has a momentum of its own: the character types were set (as they can sometimes be among groups of children: the bullies and the bullied….) Hassan was the rescuer, the risk taker, and Amir behaved according to his father’s worst expectations.

c- the worst betrayal: Amir felt he had to build on his rejection of Hassan (in b) again and again, until it was Hassan who took responsibility for breaking the bond between the two families.
This is what I remember from the book—I’ll leave it at that for the moment.

2- The hospital scene.

Amir and his father emigrated to the US. The father became very ill (from cancer), and the son took him to the hospital-- in California , yet I could have sworn this had happened in my home town in France.
X rays were taken, and the anguished son tried to get information from the intern. Amir had to fight for each piece of information, a s his questions were answered with:

“ Take this (the form) to the front desk.” (six words).

“ A referral.”

“ Pulmonary clinic.”

“He’s got a spot on his right lung.”

“Possible. It’s suspicious, anyway.”

“They’ll call you within two weeks.”

WildCityWoman · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 8:08 pm Post subject: Just loved Kite Runner . . .

And I notice that Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides was mentioned - another book I enjoyed immensely.

I like all Conroy's stuff.

There's so many books, Ophelia - and you know how that old saying ends - so little time.

Sad

WildCityWoman

Amir was a coward - but he knew it and admitted it. He couldn't fight worth a damn and was afraid to stand up and defend himself or anyone else.

He 'grew' of course, as he got older.

I'm not in university, but I have taken courses in writing and reading at a collegiate and done some online courses.

I don't enjoy discussing books that way - looking for symbolism, etc.

Certainly, writers deliberately write with symbolism in mind, but I don't see it in everything I read.

I like analyzing characters in my own way - just reckoning on them as individual human beings - I don't like to be restricted by being told what you're supposed to think about and what you're not supposed to think about.

I read for pleasure, not marks.

(Although I have to pat myself on the back - I got pretty good marks in comp/lit, both in high school and courses I took as an adult. 85% in my 1996 class)

Still, it's not my thing.

At the book discussion I go to, I find some people don't like a book if there are characters in the book that they don't like - that's kinda' silly - every character in the book can't be 'nice' - you've got to have conflict.

xxgorjess · Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 7:36 pm Post subject:

I felt carried away when reading it. The style is simple, sober (even though the story may be harrowing at times; everything rings true— and yet this is the first time I have read about Afghanistan from a male perspective.

we wrote this together..haha
but yes i agree, like we were talking about before, becuase i do believe that hearing about it from a male perspective was definitely intruiging and and the style was definitely like we put it, "simple, sober, and harrowing" :]

Ophelia · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:39 am Post subject:

Hello xxgorjess,

Make yourself at home at Booktalk, and go on posting on whatever threads you fancy. The Kite Runner for one would deserve a full discussion.

Would you like to write an introduction and tell us a little about yourself (in the "Introduce Yourself threads" )?

See you later on our forums i hope.

anotheradmirer · Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 10:45 pm Post subject:

I’m still reading “The Kite Runner.” I hope to finish it tonight and share some of my points of view with you all tomorrow. So far, the story has been heart clenching, even tearful sometimes. There are symbols and foreshadowing. (Well, Amir’s first word is Baba and Hassan’s is Amir. How clear can you get!) I like the vivid image narrated. I see colorful kites soaring in the sky and the brown pants on the pile of newspaper. It’s a horror picture but in the sense of literary technique, it’s what brings us into the story and feel with the characters more.

anotheradmirer · Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 6:17 am Post subject:

Sadly, I haven't finished the novel. 80 pages to go. Embarassed

realiz

[quote="Ophelia"]

giselle · Posted: Sun Oct 26, 2008 3:02 pm Post subject: novel context

the thread here is that context matters when it comes to writing about novels .. how so? are there no absolutes when it comes to writing well? or is it just about writing what the reader wants within the context or situation? this could be a recipe for downward spiral from authoritative writing to meaninglessness. yet feelings are a huge part of human experience, and as all writers and readers are humans, could it be that we all become scholars of feelings over our lifetimes, our own and others, hence our ability to write about them with authority? of course, the reader is under no obligation to accept that authority.


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