“’Do you worry about becoming a cliché? ‘
“’How do you mean?’
“’Another death-obsessed Iranian man?’”
My thanks go to Doubleday and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review this singular debut novel. This book is for sale now.
Our protagonist is Cyrus, an Iranian immigrant who comes to live in the U.S. as an infant. He is raised by his father, Ali; his mother’s plane was shot down shortly after Cyrus was born, an accident on the part of the U.S. military. His father dies suddenly while he is away at college, leaving him rootless. He spends a lot of time anguishing over death, wondering what is worth dying for. He doesn’t want to waste his “one good death.” Later, he points out that “If I died trying to kill a genocidal dictator tomorrow, the news wouldn’t say a leftist American made a measured and principled sacrifice for the good of his species. The news would say an Iranian terrorist attempted a state assassination. “
And you know that he’s right.
The thing that attracted me to this story is its difference from everything else that I have read. Persians almost never show up in American novels, and when they do, the Persian is the other, the bad or weird person, pretty much like the quote above suggests. So I was all in.
However, I have to say that the amount of angsty inner dialogue makes this a slooow read in places. There is also dialogue between Cyrus and friends, but most of it basically the same thing with a different format. I was primed for humor, since that’s how the book is being promoted, but didn’t find much of it.
The story wakes up a bit when Cyrus leaves Indiana for New York, but the writing remains inconsistent, and the transitions are sometimes a bit ragged.
The revelation about his mother, which occurs toward the end of the story, is startling, and I didn’t see it coming, but it also presents a credibility issue; I won’t go into details here, because it would be a spoiler. Still, apart from this one reservation, the ending is nicely rendered.
Akbar is an interesting writer, and I look forward to seeing what he writes next.
Had I no obligation to the publisher, I might be tempted to write a rare one-word review: bleak. Our protagonist is grieving the death of her beloved grandmother, and the dog died too. She’s stuck in a place she can’t get out of mentally, but since she is an artist, she takes her ennui and lets it guide her through art, and the narrative follows a pattern in which each grim thought leads her to a different art theme mentally. The story is told in the first person, and so we follow her miserable wandering thoughts from one grim topic to another, and then at some point each train of thought ends with “Works about [ fill in noun here: beds, rabbits…whatever].”
Seattle Book Mama 