And the Mountains Echoed | Khaled Hosseini

And the Mountains Echoed is the first Khaled Hosseini book that I have read, I’m not sure I knew exactly what I was in for.  Hosseini is an excellent writer, I’m just not sure I was ready for his style of storytelling.  Had this not been my book club selection for last month I probably would have put off reading this book when I had time to commit to reading it in large chunks of time.

And The Mountains Echoed opens with a father telling his young children a bed time story about love and choices. This bedtime story is echoed throughout the rest of the book.  Each chapter is a story focused around a different character and how the choices they made and those they love have a direct effect on the course of their lives.

There are quite a few characters in this book and so at the suggestion of my sister I started a character chart to keep all of the characters straight.  While each chapter is from a different person’s point of view many of the characters make appearances multiple times.  There are also quite a few locations for this story: Afghanistan, Paris, San Francisco and the Greek island of Tinos.  I was impressed at Hosseini’s ability to describe each location in such a way that you could easily see the picture he was painting.

I am curious now to go back and read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns just to see if they are easier to follow now that I know Khaled Hosseini’s writing style.  Have you read And the Mountains Echoed?  What did you think, was it better or worse than Hosseini’s previous works?