The Kite Runner – a review

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.

This review has been a long time coming, because despite finishing this book all the way in June, I just had nothing to say about it. I remember putting it down and fully thinking, “do I have taste?” Because despite everything that was happening in the story and the many glowing reviews and accolades it has, I was definitely not moved the way I thought I would be. 

I spent quite a long time gaslighting myself into trying to like it – thinking if I stewed long enough in the story maybe my thoughts on it would change the way they did with The Vanishing Half. But that didn’t happen. This is not to say it was all bad. There were a few elements that I did actually like but not as much as I thought I would going in. 

Children aren’t colouring books. You don’t fill them with your favourite colours.
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

The story is a winding saga that spans many many years and follows the life of our main character Amir, a young  wealthy Afghan boy, and the unlikely friendship he has with the son of his Baba’s servant. But like, it’s more than that as well because it’s set against the backdrop of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan. (Yes I’m just sloppily paraphrasing the blurb I’ve already posted but there’s so much that goes on in this story that I can’t fully condense it and do it justice, because again it like spans 40 years.)

One of the reviews on the front cover of my copy (I actually stole this from my friend, Xara) calls it a modern portrait of Afghanistan and perhaps that’s the case because this book had me googling Zahir Shah and the Taliban. It made look up the caste system of the Hazaras vs the Pashtuns. I’ve always known Afghanistan was war stricken but I’ve always been so far removed from it. I would not even be able to place it on a map. And I sure as hell didn’t know it snowed that side of the world.

Admittedly I still do not know a lot about Afghanistan  and I have seen mixed reviews about the portrayal of certain elements but personally I think the book did make me mildly curious enough to do some shallow research so that’s something. 

Time can be a greedy thing. Sometimes it steals all the details for itself.
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

However outside of igniting a small interest in me about the country, I also feel the book is a decent portrait of being human. Everybody and their literal dad was flawed. They made decisions I agreed with, a lot I didn’t, but at each point I could understand why someone would act the way they did regardless of my feelings. 

Our narrator and protagonist himself, Amir is actually not a likeable guy for most of the book. I would even argue that he is unlikeable in a way that is neither interesting, sympathetic or redeemable. And what a trip that is since we spend the entirety of this book in his head. As a child, he’s a selfish and mean coward who just stands and watches one of the most atrocious things happen to his best friend, Hassan. But as I said, he is also a child. One starved of his father’s love and approval which said father so freely gives to Hassan. Amir’s father himself, Baba, is as proud a man as he is a hypocrite. And you get to see the years strip him down, not of the pride itself, but some thing adjacent to it. Truly one of my favourite characters is Baba, and I think the exploration of the father and son dynamic in this book is one of my few favourite things about it.

With me as a glaring exception, my father molded the world around him to his liking.
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

But these are just two characters out of the plethora we are given. Even Hassan and his father, who some might argue are portrayed close to saints, do some things that just kind of grind my gears – even in this vielled sainthood. Actually as I write this review, outside of Baba I can not really point to a character I liked in any shape or form. Perhaps Baba’s bestfriend whose name I’ve forgotten. Still, I think this kind of works in the book’s advantage because to me very few other things do.

On the same issue of characterisation I’ve heard people say the main villain (some guy named Assef who is a representation of the Taliban) is too cartoonishly evil which is actually a fair critique if you ask me. This man has no redeeming qualities. Not only is he a bully as a child, he is technically a Nazi who grows up to join the Taliban and is also a rapist. However, I didn’t personally find this to be such a big deal given that our merry band of other characters are themselves grey to Assef’s black. Like I’m not one to always want a villain to be humanised. We could argue that morally grey villains are more interesting but my good God the other characters in this story are definitely pulling their weight over there when it comes to being not all the way good or bad. 

And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Personally my biggest hang up about the book is all its fantastical elements in the second half. There is one full circle moment I did like but the rest to me were very heavy handed and sort of overdone – which is also a description of the writing in some aspects. I can tell that Hosseini tries to make some scenes and elements of the story foils of each other but it is too manufactured for my liking. In fact the only way you could convince me that something like this could happen is if your told me Hassan was pulling the strings from beyond the grave. 

This also ties in to how some things are resolved. The odds and events in the story towards the end there are so random and convenient that the plausibility of them did my head in. The story does not try and explain how some of these things happen, they just do in pure Deus Ex Machina fashion. And situations like this happen multiple times.

It’s a shame really because the start of the book has a lot of potential. And then it becomes wildly boring for a bit. Meandering on banal things that I could hardly care about. I did not care about a majority of things that happened when this story shifts to Amir and Baba in America. The only saving grace in that mid section of the book I think, is that Baba’s characterisation really shines in this part. But the rest after the first horrific thing that happens is just… I don’t know. There’s bits in there that are fine, but that’s all they are … fine. 

The problem, of course, was that Baba saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who lives like that way without fearing him too. Maybe even hating him a little.
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

It’s actually so crazy to say that because all this story knows is heartbreak. This book had so many devastating moments that I’m surprised I didn’t cry at many of them given my nature. There’s a scene where Amir looks at a photograph and says, “now everyone in the room was either dead or dying. Except me.”  I think this is the only moment I actually felt, my good lord, someone give this man a break. However, given the many atrocities that go on here I think being moved by only a handful of scenes is  just testament that there is something grander that I did not resonate with.

In the end, this is probably a book I should have read a decade ago. I don’t doubt it was a seminal piece of work at the time it came out given the number of people who adore it. However, in this day and age, it’s not for me. I’m still hopeful that Hosseini’s other work might appeal to me more. My friends keep mentioning A Thousand Splendid Suns is the superior book so fingers crossed. But til then, this gets a low 3/5 stars for me. And I’m being generous.