This sweet memoir of a girl's soccer team in Afghanistan manages to touch on many of the tougher issues facing citizens, and women in particular, in Afghanistan. The tone is light as the narrator describes a small set of teenage girls learning to pass, dribble, and cooperate on the playing field; but there are harsher moments, too, which the narrator incorporates without unnecessary drama. Soccer is considered a boy's sport in Afghanistan, so the formation of a team - and eventually a league - was frequently controversial.

Part of the story is about the intensive, six-week long training camp organized for the team of novice players in the US. The narrator describes their impressions of America and their increasing self-confidence on the field. They don't win many games, but they gain skills and expertise that make them the finest female soccer players in Afghanistan by the time they return home.

Spliced in with the narrator's account of the training camp are the stories of individual girls in the year following their trip. Most of these personal accounts are bittersweet - one of the girls goes into a severe depression because she misses the excitement and variety of her trip, and has a hard time pulling out of it. One girl betrays the others, and joins another team - her new coach wants her to invite all the girls who trained in America, but she doesn't. She wants the glory for herself. One faces extreme disapproval from her family, who don't have a problem with a girl playing soccer so much as they refuse her the right to her own pleasures, goals, or accomplishments - the head of the family, her older brother, tells her, "It is enough that you are going to school...That's all for you."

In the last third of the memoir, the narrator visits Afghanistan and tries to give a broader perspective on the role of sports, and women's team sports, in the country. She interviews a politician who won a spot in parliament, but whose only previous experience was on the national basketball team. She talks to the men who organize national sport's leagues in Afghanistan, and probes the reasons why they choose - or don't choose - to sponser women's teams. She argues that being able to play a sport, and in particular a men's sport, builds the pride and self-confidence that she thinks is key to righting women's place in Afghanistan and an important part of building a peaceful country.

HOWEVER TALL THE MOUNTAIN is short and airy, more like an hors d'oeuvre than a main course. I felt pretty neutral about it on the whole, often charmed but never riveted or deeply engaged. ( )

Great story but author did not execute well. The part where she goes to Afghanistan is insipid. ( )

Awista Ayub's However Tall the Mountain is an inspiring tale of her own experiences as an Afghan-American and the opportunity and challenges she provides to eight Afghani girls.

Ayub's account of the events is neither too heart-warming or too melancholy. Events are recounted in a realistic and pratical manner showcasing both the positive and negative effects of the work on herself and her eight proteges. The best parts of the books are those that intersperse the changes Ayub personally experiences with the changes the young female athletes experience.

Having read Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time it was easier to understand the challenges the eight girls from Afghanistan faced. Ayub casually mentions one of the girl's journey through the Khyber Pass from Pakistan to Afghanistan without providing much detail, but with the detailed descriptions Mortenson provided in his book of the geography of the region, it is much easier to grasp the truly grueling and difficult nature of her journey.

The willingness of the eight girls to risk being ostracized or punished for playing soccer is courageous. Several of them realize that they are not taking these risks only for themselves, but also so that other Afghan women and girls can have the same opportunity as well.

This book is an excellent pre-Olympic or pre-World Cup read for adults, high school students, soccer players, and anybody wanting to better understand the difficulties faced by female athletes in developing countries and societies. ( )

This is not really about soccer. Sports fanatics will be a bit disappointed. I think, however, that most will be touched by the story of 8 girls learning to live again after the Taliban rule. In 2004, Awista, the authoress, sponsored these young Afghan women to come and learn soccer in the States. Tho Awista wrote the book, there is very little about her. Rather, she tells the story of the Afghan girls and their lives before and after the Taliban. We feel sad when their brothers are arrested, angry when they walk the streets and get jeered at for wearing jeans, sympathy when the Taliban bans them from getting an education, and fear when the Taliban knocks on their doors at night because they hear a television. When the Taliban is overthrown in 2001, readers witness the country's slow recovery thru the girls' eyes.

In a world in which it is only deemed acceptable for women to play either basketball or volleyball, these girls are trailblazers. Their training in the States teaches them to work as a team and that disputes among themselves do not have to be settled with violence. Having never known a world without violence or where everything isn't answered with violence, it was interesting watching them mature throughout the story.

The girls that left Afghanistan to learn soccer were frightened and crying. The girls that returned were ready to take on the world and empower other young women to do the same.

I really liked this book and the only thing holding it back from 5 stars is it was very short. It appeared longer because of blank pages and very large spacing and tabs. The timeline was a bit off too. They don't meet their coach Ali till halfway thru the book as they readying for the Children's Games, but he was coaching them at the beginning for the Fourth of July games.. Little disrepancies. The author apologizes for this in the Author's note tho. I read an ARC also.. It may be changed before publication.

Good book and thumbs up to Awista Ayub. ( )

A timely book written by the woman who created the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange, an organization that nurtures young Afghani girls through sport, specifically soccer, this tells of the creation of the organization but it focuses more on the original eight girls on the team. It follows their lives outside of soccer but also spends some time describing their reaction to the US when they travel here to play in exhibition games. Sports can make an important difference in peoples' lives and happiness and this book strives to show just this.

Told in chapters switching between the girls' individual stories, the team as a whole and its training, and indeed author Ayub's own understanding and feelings about what it means to be Afghan-American, this had real potential. Unfortunately, to my mind, it was choppy and had awkward transitions and so I felt as if this missed out on what could have been a fascinating (and timely) story. The timeline itself was hard to follow. I never knew if the girls' stories were pre- or post-visit to the US, which made it difficult to determine if the prejudice against girls playing soccer was one that could be overcome or if it was too ingrained to allow the particular girl being revealed in the chapter to continue playing.

Each of the girls overcame a lot in order to don uniforms and take to the field. They were determined and inspiring and I felt badly for the girls who ultimately couldn't continue playing because of family or religious prohibitions. The personal stories were fascinating and I wish there had been more to them as they illuminate so very well the difficulties that Afghanistan faces politically, both in denying their girls and women full and unhindered citizenship but also the limitations, dangers, and misconceptions men there also face.

Ayub inserts her own feelings about creating this soccer program only briefly, mentions how the girls' chatter made her want to better learn one of the languages of her homeland, and reflects how their presence made her miss certain Afghani things and customs. But she never fully developed this line of thinking. Her search for self is alluded to but even though it would almost certainly have dovetailed nicely with the stories of the girls, Ayub drops that ball, not examining her feelings fully. This tentative delicacy in delving into the meat of her research into the girls, into Afghanistan itself, and into her own heart is pervasive throughout the book. In the end I thought that all parts of the story were short-changed, which is so unfortunate given the potential here. Each thing was touched on too briefly and without depth. I really wanted to find a gem here but I was left feeling frustrated by the way that this barely skimmed the surface of such a rich vein.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy. ( )