So then you have the whole thing with her mother, Fariba. Her two sons were killed because of the Soviet invasion. So there was that. And she's just this very interesting mother character, which I really kind of looked at it as a parallel with book one. You had Maria's mother, and now you have Leila's mother, two very interesting mothers. I mean, Leila's mother is just kind of there. She's just laying in bed all day until the Soviets are kicked out
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 4:20
So it was very neat to actually read that process in a book for the character to go, what five books of mine where we talk about it as an exercise. But this becomes a real exercise for him. And the significance of such a real that also really stood out for me. And I think those are my extra thoughts for part two. If more, come in. Yeah, I do have eight questions. So part three, I am reading it right now. Part three is much longer
Hey, Shahnaz, thank you for your swell kickstarting. Part two, A-A-A-A-A thousand splendid Suns part two book today. And I'm, like, still wrapping my head around this beautiful, beautiful, heartbreaking story. So I think I'm going to take a day and come back tomorrow and join this discussion and share my thoughts because I'm right now so overwhelmed. I really wanted to talk with part two and then discuss it here and then go on to part three
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 3:18
I think there's this huge hype about this book huge that maybe if there wasn't such a huge hype, I would be more attached to it and maybe don't know, but Yeah
So that's happened to me a lot of times before. A lot of classics have just swooshed past my head without me being touched or moved, or I sped past the most profound of sentences and not even felt a thing. So I would probably attribute that kind of a reaction from me to the fact that I was not in a position personally to enjoy what the words had to offer, so I can totally get it
So that was the impact of his first book, and he was under tremendous pressure to kind of come out with a second book that did justice to his first one, and also to prove that he wasn't like a one book wonder or anything. And also, I think he was challenged by the fact that this book was written from the POV of two female characters
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 2:44
Hi Bokish podcast. I'm here to share my review of part two of the book Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalil Zuzani. Part Two starts with Leila, a girl who is bright to cheerful, almost independent of thought till life happens to her. The author takes us into the home of Leila, the daughter of Fariba and Hakim, who used to be a professor and was now working as a bluecollar worker in some factory. Kabul is now under a Communist regime, and voices like those of Hakim Amafield
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 2:06
We are already in a space where there is so much going on and we are looking for small ways to delight ourselves and with reading probably also we look at a kind of space where we can really move beyond the existing Bloom and that surrounds us. So that's all right. I guess. And since we've chosen this book, we are going with this in different ways that we can probably look at it using the filters of our mind at that given point
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 5:00
The other thing is, for me, after reading so many books, I think your tastes change when you read a lot of books. And I will bring up the Kite Runner thing because I read Kite Runner years ago. And after Kite Runner, I could not read another book. Like, if it was even anything stressful, I couldn't read it. Kite Runner made me stop reading any book that was emotionally draining because I couldn't recover from Kite Runner
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 0:33
Oh, okay. And what's myth? I agree with Diran Floriba's character. I was quite disappointed with her character, with her choices. And I was really excited expecting something big from Fariba. I really wanted to see a woman warrior or something. I don't know what I wanted, but I was very disappointed in how her character turned out
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 3:31
And in fiction, it makes it really come to life in a very intimate way. Right. But I also think that's what makes it so powerful and moving, like you said, nameless Journal. So lots of good stuff here in relation to the mothers, something that I've found just generally disappointing so far is that the two mother figures in the book that we've seen, I feel like really fall into a mother trope that we often see in novels
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:23
Are they going to get together, like, what's going to happen? And I just wanted to point that out because that's definitely something that I'm holding with me as I move into Part three. And I'm curious if you feel like that's been effective for you, too, in this part of the book
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 4:50
I'll be very honest in that kind of society. The very fact that Miriam's father even came to visit with her at all at all. I mean, forget about the fact that, oh, my gosh. He left her and got her married off and all of that at the end of part one. But really, looking back the fact that he even came to visit her because it's a male dominant society
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 4:29
Welcome to another male jerk kind of a thing. That was my perspective, but, oh, yeah, I know. I did not. I did think there was a part of me that wondered, is there something in the future for them? I mean, there was a part of me that wondered that. But then I'm thinking I was like, Well, I don't know. And then I just continued reading, and I just let the story go where it went
So, Rachel, I really love your perspective on the mothers in the book, so completely agree with you on what you said. So the women in the book are all, you know, victims of their situations, and they behave in the way they do because they are driven into such harrowing situations where they are cornered and they don't really have much of a choice. And to the part where Bookish podcast talks about Fariba being introduced as a strong character
Probably this is sort of a writing technique that some writers turn to to keep the tension building and to keep the reader hooked and engaged until it all comes out at the last few pages of the book. But then I had no hopes for this romance right from the beginning. And as I anticipated, it kind of fizzled out. But I don't know. Maybe there's still hope left for them because I say this because you aren't into part three and part four yet