And the Mountains Echoed by Khalid Husseini

 And the Mountains Echoed by Khalid Husseini

 This one is the third book from Khalid Husseini which I have read, and the second one which I finished completely. This is a story about love, loyalty, and compassion sacrifice. It is very different than the previous two of his book in which he focuses on the main characters but in this one, you won't have the same experience. Just when you think you are getting connected deeply with a character; it ends. And the story starts to be someone entirely different with a bit of connection with the previous character. 

 

     When it starts you would think it is about Abdullah and his little sister Pari; which quite of portion it really is about. But then another chapter starts and a new character rises and a new story beings. In short, you won't get attached to a single character. 

 

    I was a little bit disappointed because it was nothing I had expected I mean Khalid Husseini always writes miracles but much to my disappointment this one really was not. I could not enjoy it. I just finished out of courtesy for my new kindle and for my countryman Khalid Husseini. This could have been very much interesting if it was all about two siblings and their journey of sixty or more which they have been apart. But there is no Idea what happens to Abdullah along the way and how he arrives in the US. And how he ever searches for his sister even after growing up. Never meeting Pari was a deal between Pari's father and her foster parents, but Abdullah could have broken it when was an adult but he never did. 

My other disappointment was about Pari. She is two years old basically a toddler when she gets adopted by Nila Wahdati her foster Mother. She lives her entire life in France with her high-class foster mother who is reckless, prudent, confident, and adventurous, and can outsmart any man without hesitation. but apparently,  her adopted daughter does not get any of these qualities. She grows up without confidence or self-worth. Basically,  she never lets go of her poor origin and ordinary background. Her foster mother is a poet, a confident personality who can seduce men in a blink of an eye. 

    In one part when she dates her foster mother's boyfriend; that was really creepy and weird. That's when Nila her foster mother says that no matter what the blood eventually shows its color, and now you have proven me that you are not my blood. There are a lot of reasons why Nila adopts Pari, Which is quite beautiful and interesting to read. Those portions might be the only part I enjoyed from the book. 

All and all it was good but not too good. I would give this book three and a half stars out of five

Here are some beautiful quotes from the book as usual...

# "I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us."

# "It's a funny thing... but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want."

# "They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one your never had in mind."

# "I now know that some people feel unhappiness the way others love; privately, intensely, and without recourse."

# "Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly."

# "I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a white about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that."

# "Out beyond ideas

     of wrongdoing and right doing,

     there is a field. 

     I'll meet you there."

# " I should have been kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that."

# "All good things in life are fragile and easily lost."

# "A story is like a moving train; no matter where you hop on board, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later."

# "You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurt, only that it does."

# " When you have lived as long as I have, the div replied, you find that cruelty and benevolence are but shades of the same color."

# " It was the kind of love that, sooner or later, cornered you into choice; either you tore free or you stayed and withstood its rigor even as it squeezed you into something smaller that yourself."

# " The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around your neck."

# "They tell me I must wade into waters, where I will soon drown. Before I march in, I leave this on the shore for you. I pray you find it, sister, so you will know what was in my heart as I went under."

# "For courage, there must be something at stake. I come here with nothing to lose."

# " Kabul is... a thousand tragedies per square mile."

# "But it is important to know this, your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand."

# " He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity."

# " Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency."

# " Human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries."

# " She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily, to a lifetime of worry and anguish. It was madness. Sheer lunacy. A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one things you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world not destroy you."

# " I have lived a long time, and one thing I have come to see is that one is well served by a degree of both humility and charity when judging the inner workings of another person's hearth."

# " The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet -  they all begin to blur. I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to."

# " I found a sad little fairy

     Beneath the shade of a paper tree.

     I know a sad little fairy

     Who was blown away by the wind on night."

# "I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your won demise."

# " I want to give up my bearings, slip out of who I am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin."

# " At last, she makes her choice. She turns around, drops her head, and walks toward a horizon she cannot see. After that, she does not look back anymore. She knows that if she does, she will weaken."

# " I have a theory about marriage, Monsieur Boustouler. And it's nearly always you will know within tow weeks if it's going to work. It's astonishing how many people remain shackled for years, decades even, in a protracted and mutual state of self delusion and false hope when in fact they had their answer in those two weeks."

  Best of luck!!!!!

   stay safe