Martyr!: A Novel

Rarely enough to keep the experience special does the right book hit you at the right time and it feels like magic.Martyr! was both foreign and familiar, cringe and comfort, fantastical and realistic, and reading it is a memorable moment in time.It's an immigrant story, a generational family trauma, a college novel, an addict survival tale, a LBGTQ+ struggle, and country and city mouse journey, while wrestling with politics, art, love, poetry, writing, creating, mental and emotional health, dreaming, and magical realism. It's got NYC and Brooklyn! It's got everything you could ask for and more that you'd never think of asking it.My advice and while I'll refrain from sharing any plot or thoughts on that ending, is to just open it up and start reading... let it take you somewhere.It brought back coming of age feelings that I haven't experience on paper since Leaving The Atocha Station by Ben Lerner and is already a book I'm buying for others, pressing it into their hands, saying give yourself over to this, trust this book, and it will reward you with riches - then come talk to me about it.It's a book you want to read again right after finishing it. It's that special gift, that rare book, that you've already seen everywhere yet still manages to live up to and earn its hype. Read it.

Good politics. Story is forced. Self-indulgent many beautiful and poetic passages. Climax is a surprise but denouement with resolution of anger not entirely believable.

A friend recommended this book. I started reading it without knowing it was about. The first part was, for me, troublesome. I didn’t like it. I looked at Amazon and saw the high ratings. I persevered on. Boy I’m glad I did!! Ultimately it was a beautiful book. Full of twists and turns and ultimately a beautiful story of the love for her son. And the love of the two main characters. I loved this book!

I want to start out by saying that I really like the main character, Cyrus. He's a bitter, cynical alcoholic who is "sober" but still miserable. If you've been in the rooms, then his brand of dark humor will be right up your alley.The problem comes when the book loses him as the focus. There are chapters written from his mother's perspective, his father's, his uncle's. Then there are the dream sequence chapters filled with random famous people. And I don't mean a few chapters, but MULTIPLE! My guess is that Cyrus makes up maybe 60% of the book. These secondary and tertiary characters aren't as well-written nor distinctive.Around the last quarter of the book, it shifts and gives some justification for all the tangents. But I think the effect would've had more weight if each character would've been given one chapter each.I'm not mad I read the book but after a while, I felt like I was just trying to finish it, rather than enjoying it. With that said, there were many parts I liked and I wish the editor would've cut more.

‘The performance of certainty seemed to be at the root of so much grief. Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win…The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty. And so legislators legislated, building border walls, barring citizens of there from entering here. “The pain we feel comes from them, not ourselves,” said the banners, and people cheered, certain of all the certainty. But the next day they’d wake up and find that what had hurt in them still hurt.’ (p209)What does it mean to live a life that matters? To experience a death that matters? If someone’s death matters, to whom does it matter? In what way? Why? These questions are front and center for the protagonist. Nothing else is important – at least when he’s not high or drunk. His life’s work is writing a book about it. But it’s more than an obsession – it’s personal. Will it kill him? Will it matter?The principal characters here are emotionally and morally complicated people – as we all are. There are multiple first-person and third-person narrators, and the story jumps around the timeline. A quiet mystery looms; its resolution may make all the difference.I enjoyed the book, but I expected more than it delivered – I can’t say I came away with new insights on the big questions the book seeks to address. The ending, while plausible, disappointed me: Akbar, in my view, didn’t quite stick the landing. And a critically important conversation struck me as so unrealistic it was silly: late in the book, in a high-stakes moment of profound stress and excitement, two characters engage in a lengthy exchange of highly polished, overly scripted, deeply philosophical insights before wordlessly agreeing to…well, you’ll see. To be fair, though, this is Kaveh Akbar’s tale, not mine, and I’m glad he shared it with me.

I can’t write a review adequate enough to describe how much I loved this book, nor am I eloquent enough to rationalize the reasons. I just wanted to memorialize this amazing feeling of finishing a book that I know will stay with me, the joy of it, the sorrow. Thank you Kaveh Akbar.

Absolutely gorgeous book. I was transported to an alternate universe and enlightened by the story. I am thankful to the author for sharing his creativity and love and kindness. This book shines bright like a Star, giving light in our darkness.