Okay, It's Time for Everyone to Admit It... The Kite Runner Wasn't Really All That Good

I love it when I talk to people who like to read. I find it so much more fun to talk about novels and short stories than just about anything else, even sports. And I love to talk about sports. Usually these conversations yield excellent recommendations and books that I wholeheartedly enjoy. I'll read ANYTHING. I have enjoyed Tom Clancy and Tom Wolfe, Dean Koontz and David Mitchell, John Grisham and Jonathan Franzen... you get the point.

In any event, I read a lot of books that are wildly popular... mainly because I'm a literary "follower" and they're usually on sale. Ninety-nine percent of the time I finish a book and say, "Okay, I see why so many people liked that."

The Kite Runner, however, is not such a book. I cannot tell you how many times this novel was recommended to me (at least 30). These recommendations were not the run-of-the-mill, "I just read this and it's good," these were, "THIS BOOK CHANGED MY LIFE!" recommendations. So, about a year ago, I read it.

Now, maybe I'm callous or out-of-touch, but what is the BIG EFFING DEAL? I mean, it's a fairly well-written novel that provides a nice portrait of a country we know very little about, Afghanistan. But the best novel of the year? Life-changing? Come on.

What baffles me the most is how many EXTREMELY well-read women have said to me, "You know... Hosseini just really GETS IT. His depictions of fathers and sons and boys growing up are just RIGHT ON. I feel like I understand "

[SPOILER ALERT... If, for some reason, you're interested in reading the novel, stop here]









Hmmm... you know what, friends, you're right. Nothing says "boy coming of age" quite like a boy's servant-friend getting ass-raped by a racist while the boy competes with said servant-friend for a detached father's affection. Now, for those of you who loved the book, I'm not attempting to oversimplify the narrative. As I said, I do think the depiction of Afghanistan is nice and valuable, but the story is not this "life-changing event" that many make it out to be.

Friends (particularly female friends), I shall make a deal with you: I will not say to you, "Gosh, Kidd really GETS IT in The Secret Life of Bees... or Niffenegger really knows what it's like to be a wife," if, in return, you will stop telling me that my boyhood is best explained by a boy who wins a kite tournament.