And the Mountains Moved: Khaled Hosseini

I feel guilty, like there is something wrong with me, but I can't wait to read his books and they are about human suffering. I think I cried through the entire novel. I was relieved that after an especially powerful section he would start someone else's story from the beginning, giving the read time to get a hold of themselves, but then you realize that mild section was building into another especially heartbreaking section. By the end I was sobbing. I am so impressed with how well he captures humanity and can convey emotion, where it feels first hand. His stories all leave the reader feeling haunted, they seem to end on a happy note, but not really. In this one he follows the life of one family that meets misfortune in Afghanistan. A daughter is sold to a wealthy childless family after her mother dies in childbirth with her. The story twists through each child's life told from either themselves or their children. You can see the reasoning, the luck, and the heartbreak the decision to sell the daughter has as the children grow older. The surviving siblings do find each other, but not in the way you yearn for throughout the story. The novel weaves in other people the family had contact with in their lives, making the story that much more solid and amazing. The theme through this story again was the powerlessness they had to control their lives. The first chapter, which started off with the story of a mythical creature taking children was so perfectly crafted with the story it is hard to believe the work is fiction, with how everything written is so important to the story.