Martyr!

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is a beautifully told story that encompassed enough to be an epic, but personal enough to be intimate. A masterclass in writing along with a moving story.

Cyrus Shams has always been lost. He’s grown up tangled in the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter, and his mother, whose plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby. Now, newly sober and maybe in love, he’s headed for an encounter that will transform everything he thought he knew. Can a final revelation change the truth of Cyrus's life?

Electrifying, funny, and all-consuming, Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! is a masterpiece. Read this book.

Akbar, Kaveh. (2024). Martyr! New York: Random House.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story by James McBride is one of the best books I read this year, or any year. Set in the 1920s and 30s in Pottstown, Pennsylvania's neighborhood of Chicken Hill, a mixed Black and Jewish part of town. 

Chona is the daughter of a store owner. She has a limp from Polio as a child. She married Moshe, a Romanian Jewish immigrant who owns a dance hall. As Chona was raised in Chicken Hill she convinces Moshe to bring Black musicians and bands along with the Yiddish he has already planned.

Though they don't need the money, and actually lose money on it, Chona keeps running the grocery. She allows anyone to shop there and extends credit to her Black neighbors. 

When a young boy is in need of hiding from the state agent who wants to take him to a home because he is deaf, Chona takes him in. 

McBride is one of the great writers of our time. Read all of his books, but start here!

McBride, James. (2023). The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. New York: Riverhead Books. 

All This Could Be Different

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Matthews is the story of one woman trying to make it on her own in a system that exploits immigrants. 

Graduating college during a recession, Sneha agrees to move to Milwaukee for a job as a consultant. She has little other choice as she needs a job to get a green card once her school visa expires. 

She has been in the United States most of her life. Her parents moved back to India after her father was set up to take the blame for a scam his business partner pinned on him. Since then, Sneha has been reluctant to trust anyone.

Building a life for herself, dating and living through mid-West winters, this beautifully human novel will stay in your head for a long time. 

Mathews, Sarah Thamkam. (2022). All This Could Be Different. New York: Viking.

Matrix

Matrix by Lauren Groff is about a twelfth century young woman, half-sister to the Queen of England, who was exiled to an abbey to live among the nuns.

Marie, half-sister to Queen Eleanor, only spent half a year at court when Eleanor sent to her live at an abbey in the county - far from court. 

When Marie arrived, at seventeen years old, the abbey was a poor and gloomy place. Born in the north of France, orphaned, moved to court and then exiled, Marie knew little of religion when she arrived at the abbey. 

Over time, Marie will learn to love the abbey, the sisters, and her life. As she is promoted, she does what she can to strengthen the abbey. She changes rules as she goes until she has a fortress of safety in a time when women had few safe places in the world.

Though not interested in the time period, Groff's excellent story telling had me right away. This is a story based on a real historical figure in early England / France. A woman who had a great influence on her community and country.

Groff, Lauren. (2021). Matrix. New York: Riverhead Books.

All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is a World War II story from two different perspectives.

Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a young girl in Paris. Her father works at the Museum of Natural History. He is in charge of the keys - to all cabinets, rooms and safes. Marie-Laure is blind. She was not born blind, her eyesight slowly went away. Her father has helped her find her way around, including creating an exact model of the neighborhood she can explore with her fingers.

Werner Pfenning is a German orphan. He and his sister, Jutta, live in an orphanage in a coal mining town. Werner loves math and radios. He and his sister love to listen to a man speaking in French and teaching about science. Werner takes radios apart and fixes them - to the extend that people start hiring him to fix theirs. The Nazi leader of the town discovers this and has him sent to school to develop this skill.

The story is told in the current time and in flash back chapter of both characters. Both end up on the island town of Saint Malo on the coast of France near the end of the war. Marie-Laure at her uncle's house and Werner in the radio division that hunt for illegal transmitters.

Doerr has created a beautiful and heart-breaking book. After all of the novels set in WWII, this is a different approach. Both characters are wonderful and caught up in something too large to escape. Buy this book!

Doerr, Anthony. (2014). All the Light We Cannot See. New York: Scribner.