"The Creative Process of Writing is a Liberating and Therapeutic Experience"
www.virtualwritingcoach.com
July, 2007
In This Issue:
1. Preview
2. Publisher's Note
3. Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns
4. Helpful Hints
1. Preview
The Writer's Connection explores the creative process of writing and the interplay between thoughts, feelings, and actions.
We are an interactive community of authors and readers who share ideas to enhance our knowledge, skills, and experiences in
writing fiction in any genre, but our emphasis remains mystery and suspense thrillers.
Published monthly, the Newsletter offers writing tips for authors, coaching suggestions, editing, and marketing information.
Topics are presented from the perspective of Keith Barton and represent only his ideas on producing your first manuscript,
and are provided to the general public. Because we are an interactive community of writers, other viewpoints are welcomed and may be
printed in future monthly newsletters with permission from Keith Barton.
2. Publisher's Note
July, 2007
Dear Writer's Connection Subscriber,
This month's newsletter features some important information on
Khaled Hosseini's new novel.
3. Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini has done it again in his second novel,
A Thousand Splendid Suns!
Who would have thought he could top his four million copy novel,
The Kite Runner,
but he did so in a beautifully flowing, metaphoric prose that captures the beauty of the
war-torn country of Afghanistan. As in his first book, this story is about three generations
of families growing up in Kabul from 1958 through 2003. The families survive under three
regimes: Afghan rule with King Sahir Shah, the Soviet communists, and the Taliban.
The title of the book is taken from a 17th century poem by Saib-e-Tabrizi:
"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls."
Although clearly Islamic in presentation, one cannot help but see the resemblance to two
other biblical women: Sarah and Hagar, in the Book of Genesis. Sarah was barren and gave
Abraham her blessing to father a child by her handmaiden, Hagar. In Hosseini’s presentation,
the two women are Mariam and Laila, both married to Rasheed, a shoe cobbler in Kabul before
the communists took over. In the Islamic tradition, marriages are arranged and the
forty-something Rasheed is asked to marry Mariam who was born out of wedlock to Jalil,
a prominent businessman in Kabul. Being a
harami (or bastard child) was unacceptable if the
man did not marry the woman who gave birth to his child. Mariam loved her father and remembers
fishing and running errands with him, but her mother Nana, poor and bitter, poured out her
frustrations on the young five-year old, as reflected in the following excerpt:
"Mariam lay on the couch, hands tucked between her knees watched the whirlpool of snow twisting and
spinning outside the window. She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved
by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into
the clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below, as a reminder of how
women like us suffer. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us." (from page 82).
Despite her abusive marriage to Rasheed as a fifteen-year old, scared and poor, she struggled to survive
and became a mother to Laila fifteen years later when Rasheed married her to have the child that Mariam
was unable to give him after seven miscarriages. The book centers on the relationship between Mariam and
Laila, first bitter rivals with jealousy and distrust, but a love that endured the continued threats and
physical abuse from Rasheed who took out his frustrations on his two wives who sometimes refused to
surrender to his selfish, needs of the flesh.
What sets this novel apart from others, is the free verse prose describing the beauty and destruction of
Kabul, its land, people, culture, and spirit. During the Taliban regime, millions of Afghans fled to
neighboring Pakistan to escape the return of Islamic law that stripped women of their rights to work,
be seen in public without their burqas, or to travel the streets alone. Women could not speak unless
spoken to, could not make eye contact with men, laugh in public, paint their nails, attend school, and
wear jewelry or cosmetics.
In many ways, this book is a treatise about man’s inhumanity to women, the endurance of the human spirit,
the bond between two women held captive physically and emotionally under the cruel rule of Islamic law and
an insecure man. This book speaks to every woman who has suffered from lost love. It is a story of redemption
and grace: that life goes on and the human spirit lives in each of us.
Helpful Hints:
Read Hosseini’s book. What sociological similarities do you see in male-female relationships in
rich and poor countries? In Christian, Jewish, and Islamic law?
What similarities do you see between the Holocaust and the treatment of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban?
Do you think Hosseini’s books will become historical classic literature in the sense that the Diary of Anne Frank did for
the Jews during the 40s and 50s?
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About Keith Barton, Ph.D.
Dr. Barton received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Texas at Austin and has been a practicing therapist
for over thirty years. He is currently enrolled in MentorCoach and is accepting new clients.
He has been an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina, consultant to Fortune 500 companies in executive
development, founded and managed Texas Community Living Ventures, Inc., in 1986 for providing group home services to
persons with mental retardation, and has been running a clinical practice in Northwest Houston since 1990.
He writes part-time with the goal of completing one novel a year. His desire to coach others derives from his passionate
interest in helping others become attuned to their creative powers of storytelling.
Dr. Barton has training in coaching, cognitive and family therapy and health psychology. He has published articles, made
presentations and conducted workshops about:
Anxiety and achievement
Stress management
Self-esteem
Communication skills
Marital/relationship enrichment
Wellness issues
The relationship between psychology and spirituality
