Fanfare newsday.com NEWSDAY, SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013

C19 GSPOO 2012 PHOTO, AGES IM ETTY /G AFP ad ab It made nd to bring the inner hese are Hosseini’s Hello, sir! Hello, C20 TAN —a —t MILY ake his novels more than FA How wrongs are righted, or life of to the world —m just good reads. sitcom.” not, how good balances evil, or doesn’t concerns, both in fiction and in humanitarian work he does for the United Nations. His ability to make us look hard atmatters these as described by his daughter. “Baba and his grease-stained white shirt, the bushel of gray chest hair spilling over the open top button, his thick hairy fore- arms. Baba beaming, waving cheerfully to each entering customer. madam! Welcome to Abe’s Kabob house. I’m Abe. Cantake I your order please? me cringe how he didn’t realize that he sounded like the goofy Middle Eastern sidekick in ND ilings AND MEMOIR RA RY hole new WA ut how? TO aw fa FROM AFGHANIS —b HIS it to keep our akes us to 2003, ocomotive and 5t ab al Chapter This may sound bewildering, What works slightly less well Hosseini’s writing is not as after his death. This explains a lot, and also raises set of questions. where two Afghan-American cousins have come to reclaim their family’s home after the war. It happens to be thenext house door to the Wahdatis. but it all starts to makeClearly sense. it’s all going to circle back eventually The pages turn by themselves as Hosseini makes it happen. is the ever-expanding cast of characters. Some feel essential, but some of the tertiary charac- ters strain attention. lyrical as ’s, but he movesstory a like paints character in fast, sure strokes. Here is one character, leasure ap trange, letter written as sa 4i m/books he father finds he cannot. co shows him that the boy, .T In the next chapter, told from In Chapter 3, we flash back to Chapter y. div who has lived in poverty and hardship, is now living with a happy band of beautifully dressed children in garden with swimming pools. Take him if you want, saysdiv the Abdullah’s perspective, some- thing much like this happens in real life, tearing from him his adored sister Pari. In that chap- ter, three more key characters are introduced: wealthy resident of named Mr. Wahdati; his rebel- lious, beautiful young wife; and their chauffeur, who is Abdul- lah’s Uncle Nabi, the brother of his bitter and stingy stepmother. 1949 to get the goods onstepmother. the by Uncle Nabi, meant to be read da ws ne

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as ,t an is forced by an evil EX div newsday.com/books Mountains Echoed’ Am Read part of ‘And the ipple of small In the first section, an Afghan time and place. At first, thislittle is confusing, but a within a couple of chapters, the reader catches on, and fitting the puz- zle pieces together becomes a pleasure. The story unfolds from the 1940s to 2010, every- where from Afghanistan to In “,” the bestselling author of “The Runner” explores the small decisions on which much of life hinges. Greece, with stops in Kabul, and San Francisco. father tells children, Abdullah and his sister Pari. beloved of his offspring. When he goes to get the boy back, the spirit, a

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ovel in stories, each chapter it different from the author’s Rather than giving us extreme I’ll meet you there. “And the Mountains Echoed” Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED, Riverhead, 404 pp., $28.95. perspective, set in sort. villains, Hosseini now focuses on the trespasses of essentially likable characters people whose moments of weakness have results worse than they could ever imagine. There is has an ambitious structure. It is an told from ab beloved earlier books. Between them, “” and “” have sold 38 million copies world- wide; both have intense, melo- dramatic plots that revolve around brutal events: rape, murder, suicide. Like them, the new novel tells sister out of tree, (Actually, there is one craven Afghani warlord who is purely villainous.) Human failures, and their ripple effects over time, are seen in described by the book’s epi- graph from the poet Rumi: BY MARION WINIK Special to Newsday break and betrayal. But its scope is wider, its crimes of gives up his daughter to a wealthy family, who doesn’t make good on his promise to in Khaled Hosseini’s inter Ordinary mak

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