The Kite Runner

I'm late to all the best-sellers; I lose interest in them when everybody else is reading them. Isn't that obtuse??

So I just finished this one, after a few months of not reading much of anything at all, and it hit me like Interpreter of Maladies did: I'm haunted by the characters, confused by and stuck on them. What a beautiful, terrible tale.

If you haven't read it, it's the story of a boy in Afghanistan back in the good old days, before the Taliban. It's told through the lenses of his key relationships: with his father, with his servant/friend, with a certain mentor, with a certain bully. I won't give it away--though I'm probably the last person on the planet to read it.

But at the heart of it is an epic, shattering betrayal; the boy--Amir--is weak, and flawed. He spends his life trying to overcome it. And he's sympathetic, in the long-run. But tell me this: why on earth did Hassan forgive him? Why the persistent smile--the undying affection? Is it beauty, or is it brokenness? This is how I know it's fiction; normal human creatures don't behave like that. Do they? I'm asking you.