Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Finished Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! It was an uneven read. There were some parts that were really beautifully written; the chapter from the perspective of Cyrus’s uncle, riding a horse on a battlefield, is stunning. I enjoyed the poems that began each chapter. I was not familiar with Akbar as a poet before this, but I will definitely check out his works in that genre.
However, I couldn’t relate to the main character (Cyrus) at all. His chapters felt like reading a bored and spoiled young adult from Brooklyn’s LiveJournal. The twist at the end I found to be farfetched and rather silly. Akbar’s touches on a lot of themes (love, loss, grief, American-Iranian relations and politics, martyrdom, among others). Yet none of them are really explored in depth, and so the narrative feels incomplete. Overall 3/5 stars for the book but 5+/5 stars for the poetry.
Now reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Someone on here recommended it. It’s terrific so far.
Ha! LiveJournal! Thanks for that visual, PP!
I'm the Martyr/Master & Margarita OP... heh, the main character honestly sounded like me in high school complaining about how my life was SO HARD and how NOBODY UNDERSTANDS on my Xanga. Akbar is a wonderfully gifted poet, and there were parts of the book that almost made me cry because they were that beautifully written. But I grit my teeth in annoyance every time the narrative shifted to our main character.
Re: the M&M... I love Russian literature as well and this has been on my list for a while. I'm about 60% through. Normally I whizz through books and read rather quickly, but I can't do that with Russian lit; I find myself reading the same sentence or paragraph several times, to soak in every word.