Martyr!: A novel

Wow! A must read.

There was a lot going on in this book, but I appreciated the backstory on the main character and his family. The last 3-4 chapters, I believe, were so enticing that I couldn't stop listening! I had an inkling about the plot twist, but my mouth was still on the floor when I learned I was right.

Loved this book! So many sentences in here I want to save, and savor, and cry that I couldn't put words together like that. Pure genius.

Cyrus Shams is an Iranian American who grew up in Indiana with his father. When he was just a few months old and they were still living in Iran, his mother was on a plane that was shot down in a supposed accident by the American military. His grief-stricken father packs him up and starts a new life in America.

Cyrus grows up in the shadows of this loss and grief and even as a child has trouble sleeping and issues of depression. He is a poet and a writer but also an alcoholic and addict, in recovery. Again. He is searching for the meaning of life. He learns about an artist who is putting on her final show at Brooklyn Museum. She is dying, and she's going to share her dying with museum visitors. He decides he needs to go and meet her. He is inspired to write about martyrs, who have made a meaning of their life through death. He meets the artist, Orkideh, and she seemingly wants to talk to him longer than other visitors, asks him to come back. He comes back every day and is at once inspired and deflated by her.

Incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking, but also at times funny and entertaining. A masterpiece.

I’m solidly in the minority on this book. It gave me a bit to think about, I guess, but it really wasn’t worth reading just to get to that. Cyrus, for a start, is a deeply, thoroughly tedious protagonist. I kept forgetting he wasn’t an annoying, self-important, histrionic teenager—because actually he was well past being a teenager. His parents were relatively interesting characters, when the author got out of his own way enough to let them breathe their own air. (For what it’s worth, they were the ones whose struggles had me thinking about the real nature of martyrdom.) I know everyone is raving about the writing, but again, I’m definitely not on board. This book is so utterly self-aware; I know we’re supposed to find all the winks and nods charming, but I find them irritating, at best. There is this kind of intellectual performance going on all the time, which quickly grew tiresome. Not least, the author’s incessant need to throw up billboards announcing the source of every intriguing notion (Brian Eno! Saddam Hussein! Czesław Miłosz!), which strikes me as simultaneously pretentious and defensive. Neither of which is particularly attractive. Just steal the damn idea and move on, already. I’ve been struggling with writing this, because I do have a lot of specific thoughts about the novel. But ultimately, I just don’t think it’s worth my time to put them together into a more substantive, coherent review. The truth is, I was never going to like this book, and if I had realized that sooner, I wouldn’t have bothered. I’m not especially glad I read it, and I’m ready to move on. But if people you know have raved about it and/or recommended it, don’t let me prevent you reading it. Lots of people love it, and I’m not here to say they’re wrong. If it turns out you’re not one of them, though, you’re not actually alone.

I love Roya so much