martyr! book review

[illuvium]

first post ever & it's a book review of martyr! by kaveh akbar. i read this as part of a book club i'm in and hadn't heard of it before, so i went in blind and finished in about a day. i think as a whole that the book did certain things well but that other portions weren't geared towards the kind of reader i am. i think my rating is a solid 3.5/5, maybe a 4 if i'd read it on a better day

things i liked:
i think the kind of person the main character was is really applicable to people in the modern day, especially with the lines discussing how cyrus wanted to be on the right side of history perhaps just to be there, just to say that he had that oftentimes out of the ordinary stance on a matter. there are lots of bits and pieces of cyrus's character that show this certain aspect of his. the book's interactions with race with regards to cyrus's not speaking up in the past against his treatment & kind of laughing awkwardly and just taking it felt not just applicable to me but also fits well with the kind of person he's portrayed to be. i found myself really enjoying the book's takes on i guess shallowness with the stances people have nowadays, with portions of your ideas being analyzed by yourself through the lenses of what the best-looking take will be to others. on the topic of interaction with race, the portions about the newspapers and the role of cyrus's uncle in the war were super interesting portions to me. i didn't care for the ending much & thought the beginning was so much stronger, and i guess that's since the most memorable line of the book really came from around there with it being orkideh's line about cyrus being like every other iranian boy, yearning to be some martyr. i think if i were more eloquent that i'd be able to express what i feel better, but i guess that can come with time. i just really liked those bits is all.

things i didn't like:
honestly, this is likely thanks to my being not a huge poetry fan, but all the segments before the chapters with the poems left me without much of an impression at all. again, they don't go against cyrus's character. to me, they weren't wonderful poems, but maybe i'm not the best judge of poetry (or books in general if we're being truly real). those kinds of average poems i think do work well with who cyrus is; martyr does a really great job at characterizing cyrus & almost letting you know what to expect from him. i didn't like the poems, and also i found myself not really enjoying the romance between cyrus either. all of this is personal taste, like all reviews are, but there were lines that had me really grossed out that i honestly think the book could've done without. seriously? sucking zee's thumb? i don't know about that one. this is really nitpicky, too, but i think the prose wasn't exactly stellar. there were segments with cyrus's uncle and his mother where it was in their perspective and i found myself thinking that they all sounded about the same, and this is coming from a person who usually doesn't pick up on things like pacing issues or the voice of the character or things like that unless it's especially egregious.

all in all, it wasn't a terrible book. i don't regret reading it, but i never really regret reading books given the constant mental atrophy of having ai do everyone's work. would i recommend it? maybe. i think it's a worthwhile book but that perhaps i just don't appreciate poetry enough and that i too easily get disgusted.