RFBC #22: Martyr!
Another big debut novel from an Indiana writer
Kaveh Akbar is a darn fine poet whose work has received all sorts of accolades and honors too numerous to cite in this post (but you can see a bunch of them here). He received his BA from Purdue and his MFA from Butler University, so those of us from Indiana feel justified in claiming him as our own; in fact, one of our book club members helped develop the logo for his Divedapper poetry carnival and subsequent publication.
But a poet? Writing a novel? A first novel? About a poet? Let us count the pitfalls. That’s some precarious territory right there, potentially yielding a lot of abstruse navel-gazing in service of a cliched story about The Writing Life—especially when you throw in elements of addiction and recovery that are so much of what Martyr!, Akbar’s debut novel, are about.
So how does Akbar acquit himself? That’s the question we tackled at this meeting of Radio Free Book Club, and the answers will definitely involve spoilers—and this is one book you absolutely do not want spoiled. So if you intend to read it, stop here and come back another time—and please give a listen to our podcast. We think you’ll dig the conversation.
Show notes:
The RFBC crew for our April 2024 show was Indianapolis writer Ken Honeywell; author and accomplished writing teacher Barb Shoup; financial planner/umpire Steve Woods; and writer/recently minted social worker Robin Beery. Our show was recorded at Listen Hear in Indianapolis and produced by our new friend Galileo for 99.1 WQRT-LP.
He sees us. If you live in New York or London or one of the other dozen-or-so places most English language novels are set, you may be used to seeing your world depicted through the eyes of a supremely talented writer. But our show is produced in Indianapolis, and Martyr!’s protagonist Cyrus grew up in Fort Wayne and went to college at a place clearly modeled on Purdue and Butler. It’s fun to see settings and characters you recognize from your own life, and we don’t get to do that often enough—and not that we don’t have a whole lot of talented writers whose work is often set in Indiana.
For a serious novel, Martyr! sure is funny. It’s also moving and thought provoking and even devastating. It’s maybe all of those things more than it’s funny. But there are comic scenes and situations and barbed thoughts that make the novel feel lifelike and have you rooting for Cyrus.
So who were the martyrs? Ali, probably. He lived his life for his son, then died. Leila? No. She was the victim of a tragic accident, but that did not make her a martyr; in fact, in many ways, it was a death that did not matter, which seems to be, at least in part, what drives Cyrus’s obsession with martyrdom. Orkideh? She may be the example of a person who made her death matter, but was not a martyr.
A life that matters? Or a death that matters? This may be the central question of the book. A life that matters, even to just one other person, is worth not giving in to addiction and suicide. We all hoped Cyrus had come to this conclusion by the end of the book.
The issue of Orkideh. Yeah, he threw us a mighty curveball there, didn’t he? It was slickly done, planting in our heads that—MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!—Roya had died in the plane, when that was something we inferred from the text—not something Akbar ever actually told us. It was a slick move, and one we all admired because he got away with it. The other smack in the forehead—ANOTHER MAJOR SPOILER!—is that Roya is Orkideh. Is it too much of a coincidence? Maybe. Did we care? No.
Ever put a saddle on anger? Barb and Steve and Robin all copped to it. Ken said he was more likely to put a saddle on sadness.
Would we recommend it? We would. We loved it. Martyr! is deserving of the praise that’s been heaped upon it, and we were all happy to recommend it. As Robin put it, “There’s more than enough for anyone to enjoy.”
Bonus recommendations: Barb recommended Percival Everett’s James, the topic of an upcoming edition of Radio Free Book Club. Steve recommended Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Robin was in the middle of The Extinction of Irena Rey, a first novel by Booker International Prize-winning translator Jennifer Croft, which he was enjoying. Ken revealed the spy thriller-shaped hole in his reading list by having just read—and recommended—The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John LeCarré.
Next month: We get off our first-novel jag and tackle a second novel: Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars, the follow-up to his much-acclaimed debut novel, There There. Hope to have your ears.
