Martyr!

Where did you do most of your reading of this one, and did you find yourself needing a blanket, a snack, or a break? This book has a way of asking for all three.

Cyrus is a poet keeping a running list of ideas and notes. If you kept a notebook like that this month, what small thing would be in it?

Cyrus is looking for a death that means something, which is really a way of asking for a life that means something. When you were reading, what gave you the feeling that your own days count? Keep it small and ordinary if you like.

So much of this book is about being loved by people who are not your parents: friends, roommates, sponsors, strangers. Who has been that kind of family for you, and did any scene here remind you of them?

Akbar writes about longing for a country and a language that feel partly yours and partly out of reach. Is there a place, a language, a recipe, or a grandparent's phrase you feel that pull toward?

Recovery in this novel is shown as unglamorous and daily, mostly rooms and coffee and phone calls. Did that depiction feel comforting to you, or hard to sit with, and why?

The word martyr carries honor, horror, and a kind of showing off, all at once. By the time you closed the book, had your feeling about that word softened, hardened, or just gotten more complicated? No need to say what changed it.

This is a book full of absences: a mother, a country, a God who may or may not be listening. Which absence stayed with you after the last page, and did the book leave you feeling tended to or unsettled?