Khaled Hosseini strikes again

I just finished Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. As with the Kite Runner, I enjoyed it, but I felt slightly dirty afterwards. Hosseini has a gift for storytelling, and an insight into a culture that Americans don't know much about; that alone is enough to make his books absorbing reading. But his prose tends towards the florid. And he doesn't have the courage to let injustice triumph, which makes the whole thing feel a little like Little House on the Prairie in burqas. Sad things happen to everyone, but ultimately his good characters achieve peace, while the cartoon baddies get their comeuppance. I still like him. But his novels give me the same sensation I get when watching a Steven Spielberg film--a tragic sense of how great this could have been if he would just can the speeches and make the whole thing a little less photogenic.

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