Stoner by John Williams and And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

April 2014

Stoner by John Williams

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. His life is quiet, and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely.

Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history, and reclaims the significance of an individual life. A reading experience like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature, it is a novel to be savoured.

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Whilst reading this book I had a love-hate relationship with it.  I had to finish it, but it didnt really excite me.  It was moving in how he refused to leave his wife for the sake of his daughter, even though his wife did not treat him well.  I felt that there was some reason for her treatment of him, especially after the death of her father when she destroyed everything that he had given her - was there a dark meaning behind that?
Those of us at the March meeting had all read this and so did discuss it then.  It seemed that we all had mixed feelings about it.   We discussed it further at the April meeting - the majority liked the book.

And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one...

Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari - as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named - is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their heads touching, their limbs tangled.

One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand.

Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways in which we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us.

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I personally loved the book. Some of the group who had read it did enjoy it and some didnt. So mixed opinions.