What did you think of the characters in the novel? Did your opinion about any of them shift over the course of the story?

What did you think of the characters in the novel?

By going back and forth in time the author made me feel sympathy for some characters, then lose sympathy and then see that they were human beings reacting to the forces of general and individual history. Some became stronger and others weaker. Definitely, my opinions shifted as I came to know their stories with the shifting facts of their pasts and futures. I thought it was a brilliant device.

I liked the peeks into their characters. It did definitely make me sympathetic to them.

Marra portrayed the character's in the book I felt like I got to know them and care about what happened to them. My opinion of both Ramzan and Sonja changed during the time I read the book. Initially, I despised Ramzan, but after reading more about him I felt like I understood more about why he did what he did and became the person he had become. Although my feelings about what he did never changed, I did feel sympathy for him.

I hated Ramzan at first but after understanding more of his story I could really understand his actions. Not that I agreed with them, but I understood them better. None of us knows how we would react unless we were in the same circumstances.

With the possible exception of Havaa I think my attitude and feelings toward all of the characters changed as the chapters and details were progressing. Marra in some ways wrote the book like a good who-dun-it by revealing the back story on who all these people with out us knowing where it was all going. His style of putting the story together was absolutely genius. Each character is so unique and yet so a part of his time that they seemed very real and also very human in both the admirable and the despicable things they did.

I tried to put myself into the characters' shoes and think, "what would I have done in the same circumstances?" Wow. There is no way this made me comfortable. There is not one character where I could even imagine myself acting and reacting in a like manner. Marra was able to paint these people with a broad brush and insert pros and cons to each of their behaviors which made them so very human.

These characters will stay with me for a long time. That they are often unable to communicate, to connect with each other, to speak their thoughts and feelings seems to me to be a major theme throughout the novel. Yet their love and compassion--their humanity in an often inhumane world--is a potent force that pushes through at often the darkest times.
I had trouble keeping them separated and kept going back, especially early in the novel. Perhaps that is because Marra wanted us to see what it is that makes us human in even the worst situations.

I need more time to think this through.

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I felt a tremendous amount of empathy and sympathy. I became emotionally involved but also kept a distance trying to see their plight, choices through their eyes. At times I waivered but once again tried to see their world through their eyes.

The unfolding backstories led to an ebb and flow of my feelings/attitude toward the various characters; but the biggest shift was toward Ramzan -petty, small, greedy, cowardly. Or so it seemed. In the end, just broken, jealous and needy of his father's love, afraid. Indeed, what would any of us do in the brutal hands that molded this man.