reviews for your pleasure
jimmy stewart has a bonkers voice. like did he talk like that in real life when he was hanging out with ronald reagan or what
Much to discuss. Let’s dive in. Subscribe first if you want :)
reads
Martyr! is author Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel. It centers on Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian-American man in recovery, and his quest to write a book on martyrdom. Full disclosure: I am myself Iranian-American, so many of the themes and specific events of the book felt painfully close to me and I was maybe more emotionally drained by it than the average person. So I’m going to try not to factor that into my review too much, though, unfortunately, that is a little impossible.
This is a tough one to review for other reasons, however. First off, it’s a novel teeming with genius. There’s some beautiful, frank prose and interesting explorations of life and death and the concept of what it means to really matter to the world and to yourself. For better or for worse, the novel is deeply self-aware, often feeling like a meta-commentary on the sometimes fraught practice of writing creatively about trauma and the pretensions of living like a writer — it’s very, very cheeky at times, which I always enjoy.
The novel is ostensibly about Cyrus, but explores other narrative perspectives, most of which feel necessary and interesting, though I often wished that the book would commit fully to Cyrus’s perspective or, conversely, just have him placed sparsely throughout, because the balance occasionally felt wrong. But Cyrus is generally a really interesting character, a perfect vessel for exploring the nuances of one’s existence on the border, whether it be between America and Iran, between white and brown, queer and straight, or artist and consumer.
I’m also pretty sure Cyrus is supposed to be insufferable, and that’s okay, but it sometimes bleeds into his interactions and the tone of the book in such a way that is, frankly, pretty fucking annoying to read sometimes. The dialogue is perhaps the novel’s weakest point — it feels stilted and self-important, less real and raw than each character’s internal musings or the omnipresent narrator’s observations, and just irritatingly superfluous in a way that I don’t think real interactions simply ever are, which is a shame.
I was really engaged in the plot all the way through — every time I picked the book up, I had a hard time putting it down again and was on board with most of the twists and turns it presented. But, at the same time, there’s SO much going on. I really enjoyed all of the plot exploration we got, but the scope felt far too epic for a 400-page novel. The ending is rightly polarizing — it’s not necessarily bad, but certainly leaves something to be desired.
Yeah, I don’t know! It’s a book that is maddeningly genius in some aspects and maddeningly self-righteous in others. I believe that if the focus was narrowed solely to Cyrus and/or if it had been about 200 pages longer while retaining its different narrative and thematic explorations, it could have been a marvel. But, as it stands, it’s a decent book riddled with flaws but studded with raw potential. I’m looking forward to more of Akbar’s work; perhaps he will write something that actually is the revelation that everyone claims this to be. 3.8/5 stars.
I know you’re probably going to expect me to rant for a long time about Onyx Storm. That is a fair assumption. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you feel about this series, I actually … don’t really have a ton to say about it?
This is the third book in Yarros’s hit Empyrean series (though I have only ever referred to it all collectively as Fourth Wing). Someone told me that she initially planned it as a trilogy, but signed a five-book deal and had to stretch the story out, and that makes a ton of sense as far as this one goes because dear GOD is there an ABSURD amount of filler here. I mean, I read this a couple of weeks ago and I’m having a hard time recalling any of the finer details. Or even some of the broader ones.
A lot of this comes down to RY being just terrible at describing things, which is bad when you’re writing a fantasy series that relies pretty much explicitly on detail. I think this Reddit user summed it up quite well when they wrote, “is Onyx Storm just hard to follow at times? Or am I just stupid?” Whoever you are, please know that you are probably not stupid. I was lost half the time and I think only a little of that was my fault. I was chatting with my dear old friend Isabel and we agreed that while we maybe should have tried to refresh our memory a bit prior to reading, we really shouldn’t be responsible for having to remember EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of the previous two books to enjoy the novel and have at least a vague understanding of the stakes involved.
The second half of the book was far more enjoyable and had wayyyy less info dump dialogue and I breezed through it (it took me an insanely long time to get through the first half, relatively speaking), so that’s a positive. And the cliffhanger, as always, was great. And I still love Xaden and Violet, though Xaden was annoying as fuck for most of the novel for reasons that are too spolier-y, but if you read it, you know what I’m talking about. Just shut up and fuck her already, man. We went through this two books ago.
I’m still giving this three stars or something like that because I was entertained and, to be honest, wasn’t particularly disappointed, because after the hot but mostly enjoyable mess that was Iron Flame, I didn’t expect that much more from this one. And I will still eagerly anticipate the next one. But I’m okay waiting a couple years for it.
I’m just gonna power through telling you about Butcher and Blackbird because it was not good. And neither was its sequel, Leather and Lark. New Yorkers may recognize this book from its various train station ads. I read this so I could tag along with friend of the newsletter (and of me) Caroline and her mom, Sandy, and her aunt, Liz, to a midnight Barnes and Noble premiere of the third book in the series, Scythe and Sparrow. And oh, was it a delight! There were games and crafts and I learned that, in this book, a raccoon named Barbara shows up. I’ll go to pretty much any midnight premiere for any romance/fantasy/etc if only to join in the merriment.
Sadly, the book was not as much of a delight. It’s about a pair of rival serial killers who only kill serial killers/pedophiles/etc (very Dexter-like) and become entangled. Which, if that’s your speed, great. The problem here isn’t the premise — it’s the fact that the premise isn’t real. That is, there is literally zero substantive plot to this book. We all know that we’re not reading for the plot. But…there needs to be a LITTLE something for me to sink my teeth into so I can care about the characters, you know? Otherwise I’m just reading porn. Which is totally fine. But that’s not really what I’m looking for, you know?
I was kind of shocked that it has the following that it has because there’s no lore. Like, people love ACOTAR and Fourth Wing for the romance, yes, but there’s also lots of plot stuff not related to the romance that they care about, too. And other characters we learn to love and stuff. There’s just nothing here. Guys, please, for the love of god, I’m citing fucking **ACOTAR** here as a POSITIVE example! We can ALL do BETTER! Well, at least the smut was prolific. Two stars.
On Palestine and Narrative, by Isabella Hammad, is a tremendous essay transcribed from a speech Hammad gave shortly before the events of October 7, 2023 (as well as a follow-up essay from January 2024). It’s something I cannot recommend highly enough, nor can I do it justice in a write-up. But it’s a really phenomenal examination of how the narrative of humanity itself is written. In lieu of a review, I will post a passage that illustrates both Hammad’s point and her excellent prose:
I once heard Palestinian activist and co-founder of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, talking about an “aha” moment — what I would call… recognition. He was talking specifically about the moment when an Israeli realizes, in a turning point of action, that a Palestinian is a human being, just like him or her.
I have heard a few stories of such aha moments …
Daniel [a former “Israeli” colonel] [was] stationed at the Gaza fence… His instructions were the following: if anyone comes within a certain distance of the fence, you shoot once at the ground to warn them not to come closer. If they come closer but still within a certain distance, you shoot twice at the ground to warn them. And if they come closer than that, you shoot them in the leg. Daniel told me that he and his subordinate waited day after day at their station… And then, one day, a man appeared in the distance. He was walking toward them. He came within the first perimeter of the fence, and this little colonel shot once at the ground to warn him… And as the man came closer again, Daniel could see that he was entirely naked... And as he came still closer, Daniel could see that it was a photograph, and that it was a photograph of a child. He did not shoot the man in the leg. He put down his gun and fled.
How many Palestinians, asked Omar Barghouti, need to die for one soldier to have their epiphany? (p. 24-27)
Bonus suggestion: if you’re looking for additional reads from Palestinian-American authors, The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan is a heart-wrenching, creative (sometimes interactive!) book of poetry about the concept of home and the Palestinian-American experience and infertility and gender and more. It somehow wasn’t on my radar at all before I picked it up in at Binnacle Books (a PHENOMENAL spot with a very cool program called the Prison Books Project I encourage everyone to check out) in Beacon several months ago.
other media
Both of my courses this semester are pretty multimedia-heavy, so I’ve been watching a ton of movies. I haven’t read any novels yet, which is a little funny considering I’m getting a degree in English literature. I love grad school! Anyway, I watched Rear Window for the first time, and I LOVED it. The visuals are bonkers and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I’ve never seen a Jimmy Stewart movie before (if my currently sickly beau John is reading this, which he probably isn’t, not that I care or anything, I will watch It’s a Wonderful Life with you eventually<3) and oh my god his voice is CRAZY. Like, the epitome of the old movie star voice that people parody. Not trans-Atlantic, but something else entirely. It souns just like Richard Nixon’s parody voice in Futurama.
Another film I had to watch that I want to shout out is A Separation, the first-ever Iranian film to win the best foreign-language Oscar (which doesn’t really mean anything because the Oscars are a corrupt and pointless institution, my apologies to Gregg Turkington, but whatever, it’s nice). I was a little hesitant to watch this, even though I had to — as discussed above with Martyr!, my emotions jack up to a 100/10 when I’m consuming pretty much any media related to Iran — but I’m so glad I did. It’s about this couple who separates because they can’t agree on whether or not to move to America for their daughter and the stakes go up fucking exponentially from there. Really good, really intense, and something I will never rewatch but one I insist you do if you’re into that stuff (stuff meaning movies).
Not school-related, but I binged all of Severance season 1 this weekend and you really don’t need me to tell you how good it is, but I’ll tell you anyway. It’s excellent! The finale had me up all night just frantically pondering the concepts of identity and mortality (I’m forcing myself to wait a few days to get into season 2). Fun fact: I’ve seen Zach Cherry do improv several times — he’s on my absolute favorite improv team in the city, RaaaatScraps (formerly known as Asssscat at the old UCB, though I think they’ve started doing it there again) and god damn is he funny. He and Britt Lower are on an improv team called Frat Boyz that performs at Brooklyn Comedy Collective, where my improv team met and performs at fairly often, so the degrees of separation between us are soooo almost nonexistent I can TASTE them. This turned into an improv thing instead of a Severance thing and I’m not sorry about it. (come watch my team sometime. we’re no zach cherry but we are chEERy)
Finally, I won’t review them because I know fuck all about plays, but I’m taking a dramatic writing course this semester, so I’ve had to read a bunch of them. IDK if it’s “allowed,” but I’m counting them towards my Goodreads goal. Reading is reading. A couple of my favorites that we’ve studied so far are: Bright Half-Life by Tanya Barfield; People, Places & Things by Duncan MacMillan; and selections from All In The Timing by David Ives. The first two in particular (especially Bright Half-Life) read like novels with the formatting and dialogue. I’d recommend if you’re looking to get into reading plays and screenplays and stuff. It’s a lot of fun!
That’ll do, Donkey. Sometimes I say “laundry” in a Shrek accent (bad Scottish accent). That’s one of my darkest secrets. That I walk around mumbling “laundry” to myself like Shrek even when I’m not doing laundry. I drank a yerba matte today because I didn’t sleep last night and I have weird reactions to caffeine so I’m pouring my heart and soul out to you here. I love you. When will you return from war?