A review by bookaquarius
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

“I want my life—my death—to matter more than that.”

I read Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and I’m having mixed feelings! “Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past….” I think it’s undoubtedly a great book. I didn’t love it but I liked it. It’s artistic, and dark, and sardonically funny, and gross, and confusing. It lost me a bit in the middle when I was struggling to overcome my judgement of Cyrus, but I was refreshed when I realized his supporting character, Zee, noticed it too. I went out of my comfort zone with this one; it was almost uncomfortably real. I suppose I appreciate the surrealism at the ending now that I’m reflecting on how bleak the main story got. Besides the more obvious themes (e.g., martyrdom, whether life & death can ever mean enough, if art can actually heal anything or if it’s just something to pursue relentlessly when it feels like there’s nothing else that really matters) something that comes to mind is how this book made me recoil at the way we tend to reduce our parents to characters in the stories of our own lives, and never manage to fully appreciate the scope of their lives before us or during us. I think Cyrus’s pathological self-centeredness highlighted this. 

I’ve read so many theories about the ending and I don’t yet know what I want to believe. From death, to self inflicted death, to reconciliation, to metaphorical earth-shattering perspective shifts, to happiness, to the apocalypse, there’s obviously a lot of different perspectives from readers on this one. This unexpected last couple chapters led me to perhaps the most critical question I will ever encounter as a reader: Do I like open endings or do I hate them, actually?