Rent And the Mountains Echoed: a novel by the bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns

I have enjoyed his previous works, but found this book very difficult to follow. In addition to the difficulty in following the story, portions of each story were overlaid with music, making it impossible to hear the text. I read or listen to a book for the text, not for music. I have no objection to a few bars signaling the end of a section or CD, but it should never obstruct hearing the text. I returned this book without managing to get past the first 2 CDs. I am so unimpressed that I will not consider trying to read it in book form.

I was looking forward to this book because I have enjoyed his others, but I found it tedious, confusing jumping around to different characters in different places in different time periods and the readers were hard to understand. I think its often a problem when authors read their own books, because some of them just dont have the voice for it. On the positive side, Hosseini has once again made his characters real, and the writing is beautiful. I think I may have had a better opinion, however, if I had read it rather than listened to it.

After the first welltold childrens story, the next reader has such an accented delivery that, while intelligible, the delivery was so slow it was excruciating. I gave up in the first disc.

Loved the first, enjoyed the second. This starts out pretty boring, but I kept going and it got to some interesting characters, but then they died or had another tragedy shortly after I met them. Then it went back to really, really tedious. It is not a very good book...

1. Audio: Three individuals read this book. The first reader had an afghan intonation with a perfect English accent. The woman’s voice had a good English accent, but the third reader who read 1/3 of the book, had a strong English. Audio book reading is an art, and the readers art the ones that present the book to the listeners. I would fire the person that was responsible for selecting the readers for the book.2. The Book: I thought that each character in the book had his/her own voice, and each tells the story from their own perspective. When I was on CD7, and the author introduces Rose to the book, I had to reread the book in order to pay more attention because Rose was new for me. Well I was wrong: some of the individuals in the book did not have anything to do with the original story. When Marcus, Talia and Marcus’ mother story started, the book lost its soul for me. Accordingly, I would fire the editor of the book as well.