Martyr by Kaveh Akbar

Tuesday, June 18, 2024--San Antonio

Martyr by Daveh Akbar is an interesting book.  The central character is a young man whose mother died in an Iranian plane shot down by the USA when he was an infant.  His father, who had a good science-related job in Iran but was concerned about how things were developing there and was depressed and frustrated with the loss of his wife, moved with the son to the US where he took a job at a poultry farm in Ft. Wayne working 6 days a week.  Cyrus, the son, is also depressed, but he is intelligent and manages to attend a nearby university majoring in literature and writing.  His father dies during his when Cyrus has completed only two years of college.  Cyrus sees it as a final liberation from his past and eventually finishes his degree.  He has been depressed most of his life.  This has led him to become dependent on alcohol and eventually alcohol combined with drugs.  He writes lots of poetry, but has to live on limited income from menial jobs.  He dreams of  becoming a successful writer with a novel about martyrs (which he was taught that his mother was in Iran and which he believes that many people are due to various circumstances in their lives), but even though he eventually enters recovery and maintains sobriety, he never really figures out how to make progress on the novel nor to grow professionally.  He has a hard-nosed sobriety sponsor who helps keep him on the straight and narrow.  And he has a best friend/roommate Zee who he more or less uses for his own advantage.  Cyrus is bisexual, so he has intimacy with Zee, but without commitment.  Another friend shows him an article about a female artist, also of Iranian descent, who is dying because of breast cancer that has spread to the rest of her body and become incurable.  The artist is living the last days of her life as a form of performance art within the Brooklyn Museum meeting with museum-goers who wish to line up and talk to her and ask her questions about death/dying.  Cyrus decides that meeting this artist might be what he needs to needs as a way to provide insight, direction, and incentive to finally make progress on his proposed novel.  He and Zee head to Brooklyn for 4 days.  While there, both their lives change in unexpected and dramatic ways.  Much of the book seemed underwhelming to me as a reader--just slogging along and making me wonder why it has gotten such good reviews (listed as a best book of the first part of this year by the New York Times and highly reviewed on NPR).  But the story really comes alive in the final third of the book.  My rating is 4 stars out of 5--a bit lower than that of most other readers.