Play Book Tag discussion

When I first saw this book, I thought it would be a quick read. It wasn't true for me, I struggled with it a bit. I picked it up because it was tagged as magical realism but that didn't come up in the story for quite a while. Then the doors appeared.

The story is about Nadia and Saeed in a country at war - but you never know which country it is! That bothered me a bit at first. Hamid writes in rather long run-on sentences but its as if it was talking and telling the story so I didn't find that too offensive. However, on occasion I felt the need to start the sentence over again.

It struck me as being very timely since the subject was really about immigration. Rather heavy influxes of immigration too and how the people lived and how the countries dealt with the influx. It wasn't an easy read at all. I did like the two characters though; they had very opposite personalities. The use of the doors into different countries and the movement of the people from county to county was very cleverly done.

I didn't rate it very highly because I couldn't imagine too many of my friends I felt would recommend the book to.

Sorry you didn’t like it more. It was a stand out for me and made it to my top ten of last year.

The more reviews of this I read, the more that I am glad I listened to it. It sounds like the writing was a bit hard to follow in print, but when it was read aloud it was truly beautiful.

I have even more appreciation for the narrator because I bet it took some time to figure out the pacing and inflection on this one!