2 good books

Martyr! | The Dud Avocado

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (2024)

I first read Kaveh Akbar as the author of the poetry collection, “Calling a Wolf a Wolf.” In his first novel, he plumbs similar lived experience as an Iranian-American poet in addiction recovery as his protagonist, Cyrus Shams, share his predilections for verse and substances. We meet Cyrus as a young adult whose life has been defined by the loss of his mother whose plane was was shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was a baby.

As he considers what makes life worth living (even his own), his fixation on martyrs leads him to an artist with a terminal diagnosis who is planning to live out her last days in a museum, taking visits from anyone who wishes to visit her, and answering questions about the past and future.

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy (1958)

The Dud Avocado is a perfect late summer confection. Sally Jay Gorce is an American in 1950s Paris who follows her whims where they lead and deals with the consequences in the morning. Along the way, she acts on stage, loses her passport, falls in love with Teddy (and then Larry, but not Baxter), and never loses her sense of humor. As she puts it, “The vehemence of my moral indignation surprised me. Was I beginning to have standards and principles, and, oh dear, scruples? What were they, and what would I do with them, and how much were they going to get in my way?”