An interesting portrait of Afghanistan in recent years. The characters are sympathetic, but sometimes not quite realistic it seemed to me. Also, the central event of the story was so horrendous that I felt that the rest of the story was not so incredibly good as to make having read that horrendous bit worthwhile. It seems to be a trend in contemporary writing to make the center of a story some horribly and unbelievably foul thing - incest, rape, total disfigurement, etc. Often, I just don't feel that the payoff of the story (the lesson or whatever) is worth having read about the central event.

RELEASE NOTES:

In the kitchen of the non-profit agency, the Advocacy Center