And The Mountains Echoed has a very promising start. A sturdy story line, strong, and lively characters, in terms of their coming to life. Pari and Abdullah are two sibling who love each to death. They live in a village called Shahbagh and barely manage to make ends meet. Trouble arises when their step uncle takes a six year old Pari away in the city. Abdullah is devastated. The foundation of the story is the estrangement of these two siblings; how a single decision can affect lives, spanning around the globe from the smallest village of Afghanistan to California and Greece.
*spoilers ahead*
That is where the trouble comes. Hosseini introduces a horde of characters, each more forgettable than the last, their lives those small classified ads in newspapers you never bother to read. Their lives are uninteresting, boring and kept me on the verge of dropping the book.
Since there is no definite story line and each chapter tells their life, it is hard to determine what happens to those. Multiples of twists and turns that are not needed, stupidly entangles lives, uninteresting back stories. This one was a let down.
A Thousand Splendid Suns had kept my hopes up, only to see that crash like this. It was a disappointing book.
The World Past Me 