The First Kite

I had always meant to read The Kite Runner on my own but with all the mumbo-jumbo of classes and assignments, I never got around to it. Now that I have the assignment to read it for class, I can't seem to put it down. The way Hosseini begins the novel throwing the reader right into the setting, the landscape, the relationships, centering yet confining to Afghanistan. I love the word choice and the way he ends each section with a foreshadowing one-liner. On page 47, the closing line of chapter 5: "Because that was the winter Hassan stopped smiling." How powerful eight words can be...how foreshadowing...how telling of what is to come, or how these boys' lives are about to change.

I pay much of my attention to word choice and paragraphs like Hosseini does in The Kite Runner because I feel that every word has the opportunity to build and build and build until a cliff-hanger like the end of Chapter 5...or all the other sections. It is a powerful technique that I, myself use as a writer. The innocence lost in the chapters we have read is relatable on a level beyond their location, beyond their ages, beyond the walls of the Middle East. I think I'll go read some more...