How can a book be so sad? Within the first forty pages, I was ready to break down and weep. I almost dreaded having to pick up the book when I got into bed (nor could I resist. Kinda like being a drug addict. Don't want the fix but can't resist either) but then once I started reading, I didn't want to put it down. It almost seemed like the book was taunting me with the amount of sorrow it could pack. Every time I thought there's no way the book could get any sadder, the next chapter just brought more heartbreak. Grief piled on top of misery with a helping of being the wrong sex in the wrong country when the shit hit the fan.
The characters just seemed so alive in the novel, and I felt all their trials (I wish could say I felt their tribulations, but there were hardly any tribulations until the very end. Mostly tribulations just resulted in more misery), and I almost felt that it was happening to someone I know. I couldn't separate reality from fiction as I read the book. It felt like a real story, real people, partly because its set in Afghanistan in the recent past, a past which is very alive today and a culture which is very much in the news at the moment.
Having a young daughter, all the gloom visited on Azizi struck unbelievably close to home. I couldn't help think of my daughter when reading about Azizi. How terribly sad to have to face a life like hers. Terribly sad to face any of the lives in the the book but Azizi's was especially hard on me.
People stuck in situations beyond their control whose only want in life is to live without war, to be able to live a life of their choosing. How is that that this is not possible in the 20th century? I think that strikes are the crux of why this novel caused me so much grief. That what the women are striving for is so simple, something that I expect as a birthright, but is still far beyond the reach of a lot of people. Something I feel powerless to address in any shape or form. Therein lies my true grief.
