"The Kite-runner" by Khaled Hosseini

As I recall, Don pointed this book out to me more than a year ago. But strangely enough the desire to pick it up never became compelling enough for me to act on it. Then by chance I happened upon it last month while browsing the shelves of the library and decided to add it onto the pile I was juggling in my hands.

[Sidetrack: I'm a glutton when it comes to borrowing books from the library. My "eyes" are always bigger than (a) my actual borrowing limit (which is why I have "swiped" my parents library cards ever since I was old enough to go to the library on my own; and (b) my actual bandwidth to finish them within the 3-week deadline set by NLB. The good people of NLB have since revised the policy to allow for free 1-time renewal AND a maximum of 6 books each, which has needless to say sent me into transports of delight.]

"The Kite-runner" (henceforth shortened to "TKR") didn't make the final discard pile as well, so I ended up borrowing it. And even then, the compulsion to read it was never quite there. Today being a self-imposed stay at home day as I was rather down, I ended up picking it up and completing it at one sitting.

For me, the best part of TKR was when Amir's self-redemption and self-discovery started to happen two-thirds into the story, and how he grew to accept the truth about his father and attempted to do the right thing by his nephew. The war backdrop of Afghanistan interested me less somehow, that was how absorbing the tale of the 2 half-brothers' fates were for me.

At one point when the fates of the 2 half-brothers diverged, I was always conscious of the need to want to turn the page faster while reading the section on Amir's life in America, to find out how Hassan had similarly fared. It was doubly poignant and I think rather well-done of the writer to choose to reveal Hassan's story by having another character speak about what happened to him, indirectly rendering his fate all the more tragic and echoing his choice to always be humble and live in the shadows.

(You can read Don's review here, which I did on completing the book today as I was curious enough to read his review of it again now that I had read the book.)

Rating: 4 out of 5

"The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred" (HSMRMHB) by Carl-Johan Valgren

A rather uncanny coincidence, that by chance the 2 book reviews I'm about to review today has to do with children, social status, and how both books actually use the picaresque storyline to different effect. It's also rather freaky, on another front, given that of the 6 books I borrowed, I had to read the 2 that bore the most similarity together, when the remaining books could not be more different.

But enough of that.

The first, HSMRMHB, is a picaresque fable recounted in the 3rd person of the love story of the ugly Hercules and the beautiful Henriette. Both were born in a brothel on a stormy night in 1813, and from that day on, their fates were entwined.

Hercules was born deaf and mute, and was so ugly that for the first few years of his life, the procuress of the brothel kept him locked away from the external world, for fear of horrifying the world who could not take the sight of a freak, and of harming a child that whilst ugly, nevertheless had a pure heart that beat only for Henriette.

Beyond his disabilities, Hercules had a gift for reading people's minds and conversing with them in their thoughts. This was to be both his undoing and his salvation in his later life, when he used it to aid him in the search for Henriette, and eventually in his quest for revenge for the murders of Henriette and one churchman who had sought to protect him from charges of demonology.

Another interesting point: do go and take a second look at the book cover in the beginning of this post. You will realise the cover is written in the freak show poster style of that time, and deliberately laid out/ rendered in the style of posters advertising for freak shows -- don't ask me how I know that, but I think I came across something similar before. It was the reason why I picked up this book in the first place, though eventually I was to realise that this cover was an indirect reference to the time Hercules spent as the main attraction in a traveling freak show.

The original book is actually written in Swedish, and while I do not know if any subtle nuancing is lost in the translation, I do think this version remans quite a good read. Though at times, I tend to find the prose a bit awkward, I think overall it still works and whatever that comes across funny, can be chalked up perhaps to the language style of that time.

Hercules' devotion to Henriette is the thread that binds the whole story together, but unlike the usual love story, I thought it had rather dark overtones in its way it placed Hercules as the central figure of the story, and had him struggling against church doctrine, social norms and being the 'outsider' in a normal world. It lingers after you finished the book, but beyond that I guess nothing earth-shattering.

Readibility: 3 out of 5