Rating 3/5
Review:
Fluffy and predictable but redeemed by some good atmosphere
I expected this to be a quirky novel about life under the Taliban, leavened with some women's subversion of repression and cricket. There was some of that, but the plot is basically a fluffy, predictable romance with burkas thrown in and a tiny bit of cricket in the background. The book merited three stars for me because I found the portrayal of life in Afghanistan under the Taliban, particularly for women, powerful and convincing in places. The author is male and I am pleased to see that female reviewers found the female narrative voice as convincing as I did.
Apart from these undoubted merits, however, I found the plot and characters thin, predictable and unconvincing. It is packed with cliché and, needless to say, Rukhsana our narrator is perfect, with impeccable loyalty, a feisty spirit, unimpeachable integrity, remarkable beauty which she isn't really aware of...tick them off as you go. I strongly suspect that this was written with more than half an eye on potential film rights.
I must also warn anyone reading this because of the title that the writing about cricket is simply dire. None of the beauty, power and grace of the game is evoked anywhere and the poetry of its language was entirely absent - indeed the author simply doesn't know the meaning of some of the basic cricketing terms he uses, and the cricket itself is ludicrously unconvincing.
If it weren't for the decent depiction of the repression I wouldn't have finished this book and I found myself skimming as the predictable plot was played out by rather cardboard characters, so I'm afraid only a lukewarm recommendation
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