Outside Reading, Week 6, Post B

Mr. Hosseini-
Woah! Talk about a dramatic turn of events! Who would have guessed that Tariq would still be alive? Wow, you're so amazing and such a good author!

^Sarcasm

I don't know what you tried to pull in this last section, but whatever it was, it failed miserably. You set the reader up to start living in this oppressive, totalitarian government where it appears that Mariam and Laila have no future, and then bam! You throw Tariq back in the picture? Talk about deus ex machina! When you kill a character, go ahead and kill him. To just tangle the character in front of the reader's emotions like a worm on a line is just cruel and stupid. Laila and Mariam are too concerned about the here and now to be worried about some far off love interest that, for all intents and purposes, was blown to smithereens and has no possible chance of survival. Then, you pull in this far out side story that Rasheed was stalking Laila all along and hired a man to pretend that he saw Tariq die? It..it just doesn't make any sense! If you were trying to go for a plot twist, make it original and exciting, like Laila shoots Rasheed or Rasheed kills Mariam, or Zalmai runs away, but don't go the fake death route. For such a classy book, this was probably the cheesiest and clichéd path that you could have taken. In the immortal words of my third grade teacher, "Tom, I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed."

You had better pull this book on the right course or I will be pissed.

-Tom