A Thousand Splendid Suns (Book #86)

I rarely read literary fiction and especially tend to flee any book whose buzz cries, "Coming soon to a book club near you as soon as it's out in trade paperback." But I made an exception for A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini, 2007), because I heard the author interviewed on NPR and was curious enough to give the book a try. I'm very glad I did--I loved this poignant, harrowing, but surprisingly hopeful story of two women in Afghanistan. The action covers roughly 1973-2003, and part of what made it such a compelling read was the constant reminders that this WAS happening during my lifetime, that women my age (I'm about a dozen years younger than Mariam and eight years older than Laila) lived like this.

Good book. Really good book.