I have read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns which I enjoyed both quite well. Searching in the blog titles you can find the write up for A Thousand Splendid Suns. I have the books for the first two but I borrowed, And The Mountains Echoed, from the library. I found I had a hard time reading this book. My pages would move on my iPad and when I would open it up again and start reading nothing made sense. I would then spin it backwards to find the spot where I left off.

The book starts out in a small village called Maidan Sabz. Another thing I had a problem with were the names of people and towns. This first chapter started in Fall of 1952. The man of the family was called Baba Ayub. He loved his wife and his many children. He was telling the children about div that came to the village and would take away a child, if they looked up… It was quite a story for sure. While writing this now it made me have a thought that this is the way they explain about the young children that come up missing. They have maybe an overabundance of young children and they sell a young one to people who don’t have children. Having this happen is an integral part of the book. The eight-year-old boy was very close to his 3-year-old sister. He was so heart broken and her whole life she had feeling that there was something missing in her life but could never put her finger on it.

There were so many characters in this book, if I would read it again it would be good to write them down so you know which way the story is going. It was not a bad story that would take place in different areas. It was quite confusing It goes from 1952 to 2010 with a lot of story.

I do want to say that I thought once, surely all these people come together and give a meaning to the book, and they do.

This is the first book that I managed to finish for 2026, I am planning to have more and have my next picked out. Oh and it is a real book.