BookTalk: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini || Forgiveness

No idea why it's taken this long to read this, considering it's been sitting in my room for a few months and maybe even a year. I've been recommended this left, right and centre but I had expectations for it that I just didn't feel like reading at the time. The only way I can describe it is that I thought it was going to be a historical document on the Taliban, Afghanistan/Iran/Pakistan, and refugees. Even though this was true to some degree, this book wasn't even about what I thought it was about and it took me into a whirlwind of surprise and I really needed to discuss it before my mind exploded. 

In case you haven't read it (and if you haven't, this isn't going to be spoiler-free so I'd suggest you leave now unless you don't care about spoilers and want to know about the book and this probably isn't the place for you either, it's going to be a whole lot of just 'what I thought') or just need a recap, this book is about two boys who share a home and a friendship. There's Hassan, a boy who has undying loyalty and kindness and is also the servant's son. Amir is the narrator of this story, a boy who is a lot less loyal and a lot less kind. One day, something beyond awful happens to Hassan and this story covers the consequences of this event. The first part here is set in Afghanistan in 1975, and by the end it is set in America in what appears to be the current day. 

Basically, what I thought this book was going to be about was that the Taliban arrive like a marching band on the day of the kite tournament and they take Hassan and do terrible things to him, and Amir was going to have to try and find him and he failed so when he leaves the country to find refuge, he wants to come back to try and get redemption for this mistake. It wasn't that far off, but it was incredibly far off. 

What actually happens is, on the day of the kite tournament, Amir wins. After he wins, his kite is cut and Hassan does what he does best and runs to catch it. Of course, he does, because Hassan is brilliant in so many ways. I think it's because he was taking a while, but Hassan runs to find him. He does find him, and he's surrounded by their worst enemies. I forgot the other two boys' names, but because they don't appear again in the rest of the book they aren't relevant. The one that does the real damage is called Assef. 

This is the part where I almost slammed my book down in anger and called it quits, because it's quite hard to love a book when you hate the narrator - although I didn't end up hating him for very long, I seem to have a weakness for main characters who are assholes.

Assef rapes Hassan when Hassan stands up for Amir and says he wouldn't give up the kite for anything. He just accepts being raped by Assef, because he wants to stay loyal to Amir. The worst part about this is that Amir had watched the whole thing from the sidelines, and we later find out that Hassan knew this and still stayed loyal, but didn't step in and instead chose to ran. This is the second book that has ever made me cry (the first being "A Monster Calls" by Patrick Ness), although it wasn't really crying, it was more like my eyes watered and I had to stop reading for a moment to collect myself - but I'm going to count it. The part that made me cry was when Hassan walks back to Amir with the kite in his hands and blood dripping down his legs. Amir didn't even have the courage to make him feel better, he did nothing. 

Later on - unclear when, could have been weeks or months - Amir frames Hassan because Amir wants Hassan and his father, Ali, to be gone. Amir's dad (Baba) and Ali have been best friends since they were kids, so not only was he destroying the friendship he had with Hassan and ruining any chances of ever being friends with him again and even just admitting to the truth, he broke the friendship between Ali and Baba too. Amir does this by putting his watch and money he received for his birthday underneath the mattress. Even worse, on Amir's birthday, Hassan and Ali give Amir a gift that cost them a lot of money and seeing as they are servants I imagine they don't have much. 

This did teach me some things that I have been thinking about lately, though, about the art of forgiving other people and forgiving yourself as well as being kind and grateful for what you have despite your dire circumstances. 

I think it's important to forgive other people so you can let go of your past pain and move on. It's not about whether they deserve it or not. It's about letting go of the anger and the want for revenge, so you can move on with your life and put that negative energy to some good. If the people in this book, like Hassan, can learn to forgive the harshest of crimes then I'm sure you can forgive and forget, too. 

Very much how I saw the rest of this book was like an act of atonement, almost. Amir spent so long trying to forget what it was that he did, and ignoring it, before he eventually reached the age where he was in his forties and he properly paid for what he did as a child and made it up (ish) to the son of Hassan. There was a lot of metaphors and hidden messages and meanings I picked up behind the whole Amir and Hassan's son thing, but what I am choosing to focus on here is that it is possible to forgive yourself and atone for what you did and doing bad things doesn't always make you a bad person. Doing bad things and feeling remorse means that you cared, and you're not entirely a bad person in there after all. I really liked that message which I personally got from it. 

I have wanted to make a blog post on forgiveness for a while, but I wasn't sure where to start considering I still haven't really forgiven myself for what I've done in the past and I sometimes think I never will. It's a journey we all have to take on sometimes, and one that you don't have to do alone. 

Also, this book does talk about the very important topic about Muslims/Afghans seeking refuge after the Taliban 'invaded' Afghanistan. Very much like ISIS in Syria, these people need help and I thank this book for bringing to light what should have already been in the light - that people all need help, and the act of a few does not equal the act of all. If you are against Muslims or refugees entering another country for any reason, I hope you have read this book and changed your mind.

- Thank you for reading, and until next time, Loz x. 

There's so much I can say about this book but I think I'll leave it there until next time! 

Thoughts || "Eleanor and Park" by Rainbow Rowell.

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and she's never felt more alone. All mismatched clothes, mad red hair and chaotic home life, she couldn't stick out more if she tried.

Then she takes the seat on the bus next to Park. Quiet, careful and - in Eleanor's eyes - impossibly cool, Park's worked out that flying under the radar is the best way to get by.

Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall in love. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're 16, and you have nothing and everything to lose.

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is funny, sad, shocking and true - an exquisite nostalgia trip for anyone who has never forgotten their first love.

(yes, I copied that from Goodreads. Don't judge me, it's a lot to type, okay!)

(oh, also, this talk is not spoiler free)

So I started this book on the 2nd August, and then finished it in the morning of the 3rd August. I was pretty close, actually, to finishing it in one sitting and it was only because I was getting tired that I didn't. Now, because of this, you might think this talk will be a mostly positive reflection on the book and, as much as I don't want to tell writers their work is crap, it won't be. I like to be as honest as possible on all my social media, my blog is no exception. 

I'm just going to start with Rainbow Rowell overall. I haven't done much (any) research on her, though, so it's just going to be on her writing style and that disclaimer-like chapter at the back. I find it incredibly gripping, even when what she was writing at times didn't interest me. For example, it began to get repetitive and predictable real fucking quickly. I went into this book hoping that it wouldn't be just like any other YA romance, and was thoroughly disappointed. But, more on that later. The fact that it was Rainbow Rowell writing it made me want to keep reading. Sure, the hype surrounding her as a writer probably has something to do with it - even though I've never caved into hype unless I am actually interested in reading the book - but I guess we'll find out if I really do like her writing in future books.

She was pretty sassy in that end chapter. And, you guessed it, that made me really like her too. Although the fact that she ended the book on something that makes me eager for more kiiinda makes me mad. I want to know those three words, dammit! Was it "I love you", or was it "I miss you?" Was it "Come to me?" or "I'm visiting you?". Because of the set-up in the entire book, where Park always said "I love you" and Eleanor wasn't into saying it back (I feel you on that, girl), I'm inclined to believe it was "I love you", however there was also a little tension surrounding "I miss you", too. I guess we just have to go with whatever our imaginations want us to go with. I'm getting off the point majorly here, yeah? Yeah. 

Let's just move on. 

Character development, to me, is pretty important in books. If you don't have characters that you can connect to,  is there really a point in making a plot around them? Is there really a point of telling their story if you don't know the person who's telling it, really know them? I felt this frequently when reading this book. Although, it wasn't bad development, I have read worse, much worse. Eleanor was fiery, just like her flaming red hair (yay, stereotype). She had sass, she remained with a somewhat upper-hand, she was eccentric, she was a "freak", and my favourite part was that she was never described upfront to be a pretty and curvy girl like every other female is in YA romances. They are meant to have a somewhat "flaw" by being bigger then other girls, but that flaw...isn't really a flaw, it's more like some sort of porn movie desire in the end. Some people found her to be pretty, some didn't, which to me is giving across an outdated message of "beauty is subjective", which I believe in but I've heard enough about it. Eleanor, maybe because I connected to her, wasn't where I was seeing development problems.

It was with Park. 

Firstly, and this is just personal preference, I don't know why you'd call your child Park. Secondly, he had vague differences to every other boy in the 80's - aside from the fact he was Asian and "womanly", that is (also another reason why I like Rowell, she kicked gender roles in the face). He sneakily looked into his dads' Playboy magazines, he dated girls because they were popular rather then actually liking them, etc. What Eleanor saw in him, I would never know. 

And, when it came to romance, they said the same sort of things to each other, as they do in every YA romance. Although, I do appreciate this book sounding more like teenagers. Teenagers are jerks to each other, and aren't always soppy and over the top and having sex whenever they get one free moment (although they were almost like that, lets be honest here). 

Which leads me onto my third point, their romance was not believable, they were really just meant to be close friends. I felt for them as friends, but their romance was almost forced, like they needed the affection but couldn't get it from anyone else. Despite this, I was cheering them on throughout the entire thing. I wanted them to work out. I was dying for them to work out. They warmed my heart, gave me butterflies in my tummy, and made my head dizzy - and I'm not even one for romantic shit, that usually just isn't my thing. 

And, lastly, the plot. It was okay. Overall, it was just a story of a blossoming romance. The domestic abuse was not really portrayed horribly enough for me to be mad about it or demand that she never do that again, but it did seem like a ploy to make their romance work out - or seem tragic. But, their was a lot of that in here. A lot of coincidences (like Park, after months, learning how to drive before Eleanor needed to escape out of the town due to her abusive stepdad who was probably going to rape her any day now if she hadn't have got out). It just wasn't an amazingly well developed plot, but I actually kind of liked that. It made a nice change to the very complicated, sometimes over-the-top plotlines I find myself reading now. 

After that hell of a discussion, what do you think about the book, did you like it or didn't like it? Who was your favourite character?

Loz x