The Heart Crusher

Practically since the day the book was released, people have been telling me that I must read Khaled Hosseini's runaway hit, The Kite Runner. I think the remainders of my teenage rebellion have all been filtered into my reaction to suggestions like that, though, because the more people tell me I should read or watch or listen to something, the less I want to do so. It's a weird sort of snobbery, I suppose.

But I finally gave in when one more friend said: "I'm reading it now and loving it. He's a great storyteller."

I didn't just read it - I devoured it in roughly four sittings. And then I wrote back to that friend with a "fuck you" - my apologies to my cursing-averse readers, but there's no other way to say it. She was right - Hosseini is an amazing storyteller - clearly, I could not put down the book. But I spent those 371 pages wondering why I was punishing myself with the images of such horror.

After the first horrific episode, child on child violence (I truly can't think of anything worse than sociopathic children torturing other children), I didn't for a second imagine that the worst was not over; I thought the rest of the novel would be the internal battle of a person recovering from that one horror. But no. There was so much more. And I had to know - had to believe that there would be some glimmer of hope in the end and truly, that was all there was - a glimmer.

I suppose it's a strange sort of compliment to Hosseini that the characters and plot were so real to me that I literally sobbed when I finally finished the book (right after I let out the breath I had been holding all week) - in Rob's arms, nose running, sobbing. I've been emotionally attached to books before but never reacted like that. Perhaps it was part relief that I was done and didn't have to see if and in what other ways these people would be punished for being alive.

I felt, actually, a lot like I feel after reading the paper some mornings, the wretchedly true accounts of the most awful murders that always leave me wondering why I needed to know that: will it make me safer? Does it help me understand the world better? No, not unless paranoia and a lessened belief in the basic good of humanity are somehow adaptive.

Perhaps the impact of the book lies not in the reality of the characters but in their plausibility - that there truly could be, and likely are, Afghanis who have had similar experiences as their country has been torn apart in the last three decades, a country that, like all countries, had its problems but which were compounded, magnified and turned into nightmares, all under the guise of doing Allah's will. Don't get self-righteous on me, America - we have no room to judge when so many of the atrocities committed on our own soil have been justified by the scriptures of our majority religion.

We'll see if I have it in me to brave the paper this morning... perhaps I'll find myself a lovely, giggly Tom Robbins book and attempt (with futility, I'm sure) to empty my mind of the images Hosseini implanted. The downside of brilliant storytelling...