FictionChildren lead their own little lives so intensely they tend to remain removed from the world that surrounds them - no matter how traumatic events in that world might happen to be.
It is perhaps this distance that made Khaled Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, such an effortless and poignant read. The reader was left to consider and assess on behalf of the protagonists, two young Afghan boys - in other words, to become involved in the story. Hosseini, through the lives of these boys, gave us a rare insight into an Afghanistan that no amount of CNN news coverage or newspaper inches could possibly allow. While the country's turbulence remained in the background, the story of the boys was to the fore. One complemented the other, thereby enlightening rather than merely informing the reader. The beauty of The Kite Runner was in its subtlety - a quality somewhat lacking in Hosseini's new novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Once again, Afghanistan is the setting and Hosseini has chosen two different characters to carry his story - this time they are female and, for the most part of the novel anyhow, adult. Mariam is born a harami, a bastard child, the lowest of the lowest, banished to live in a village with her embittered and demanding mother. The weekly visits from her wealthy father bring the only patches of light into an otherwise dismal childhood. When her mother kills herself, Mariam's father offloads her onto Rasheed, a widower and a shoemaker from the distant city of Kabul. Mariam is 15 years old.
Rasheed allows a short honeymoon period before showing himself to be the true bastard of the household. He has scant regard for womanhood in general, and even less for his wife. He insists she wears the burka, punishes her for her many miscarriages and allows her no control over her own life. Needless to remark, when the Taliban arrives Rasheed embraces the regime with open arms.
Laila, meanwhile, is the youngest daughter of a neighbouring family. Laila's parents have their problems, but they do, at least, love each other. They have a progressive outlook and although their two elder sons have joined the jihad and are away fighting the Soviets, they accept the communist regime because it educates and treats girls as equals. And so, through these two women, we experience life on both sides of the burka.
Then a series of harrowing events, both personal and political, throw Mariam and Laila together as equals, and they find themselves sharing the same roof as well as the same husband - the dastardly Rasheed, by now a somewhat melodramatic figure that might easily give Bluebeard a run for his money.
HOSSEINI WRITES IN a very calm and clear style and his sentences unfold slowly. This easy pace works extremely well when it comes to the everyday life of Afghanistan; the rituals of religion and daily bread; the interiors of houses and shops; the colour and music in the streets. And even, later, when the Taliban have removed all that, he captures with equal grace the terror and bleakness of a city drained of all forms of expression. When he describes Mariam's first outing dressed in the burka, we are in it with her, stumbling over the hem, squinting at the world through a grid. When Laila's brothers are killed we are in her living room, removing our shoes at the door and listening to verses from the Koran chanting out of the cassette player. This style is less successful, however, when it comes to the violent scenes, of which there are many.
In fact, both Mariam and Laila suffer relentlessly and the brutalities inflicted on them both by Rasheed and by the Taliban regime rain thick and fast until eventually we come to expect nothing less. This is a novel so dark there are times we can't see or feel anything at all.
There is a further problem. Because it covers the period from 1978 to 2003, as one regime overthrows the next, we are too often overloaded with political information. Granted, a certain amount is needed in order to stay with the story, but as this information tends to come in chunks it can feel as if we are being pulled out of the narrative and shoved into the classroom. From the communist coup to the various power shifts leading to the American bombings, Hosseini seems determined that we understand every move made, every leader and faction involved. This tendency to veer towards the didactic takes the heart out of the story and prevents A Thousand Splendid Suns from being the novel it could be.
Christine Dwyer Hickey is a novelist and short story writer. Her Dublin Trilogy has recently been reissued by New Island
A Thousand Splendid Suns By Khaled Hosseini Bloomsbury, 389pp. £10.99