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Ultimately a queer love story �� or series of interconnecting queer love stories �� poet Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel centres on Iranian American Cyrus - although Iran itself isn’t even a distant memory, Cyrus was still a baby when his father moved them to America. After leaving university Cyrus is adrift, grappling with a history of extreme alcohol and substance use, compulsions barely kept at bay through AA. His everyday is Indiana where he attempts to write poetry but makes a living as a “standardized patient�� someone whose feigned diseases train prospective doctors to project a suitable “bedside manner.�� It’s a role that seems to encapsulate Cyrus’s impression of late capitalist America, an alienating place lacking in substance, a society where even its carers merely “perform�� empathy and compassion.

Emotions of grief and anxiety threaten to overwhelm Cyrus, so much so that he decides to embrace them. He plans to die but only after he’s achieved something that gives his death meaning, like the martyrs whose stories obsess him �� from Bobby Sands to Joan of Arc. An obsession rooted in the death of his mother on Iran Air Flight 655, a passenger plane shot down by American missiles, killing everyone onboard. For Cyrus his mother’s death’s the very essence of futility: essentially written off as collateral damage by American forces and used as a propaganda tool by Iran’s, even its outcome has no stable meaning. The later loss of his father who died labouring on an industrial chicken farm confirms Cyrus’s impression of life as meaningless and absurd. An absurdity that surfaces in a series of surreal dreams which throw together characters from his life with fictional figures like Lisa Simpson. But then Cyrus hears about Iranian American, performance artist Okideh’s DEATH-SPEAK a piece located at Brooklyn Museum. Okideh is dying from a form of cancer and has chosen to spend her remaining time conversing with museum visitors. Together with his closest friend Zee, Cyrus travels to New York to meet her and what he finds changes everything.

Akbar’s semi-autobiographical novel delves into complex issues of identity, othering, the nature of art, faith versus radical uncertainty, connection versus disconnection. There are numerous shifts in time, place, and in perspective, we hear from characters like Zee, Cyrus’s father, Cyrus’s mother recounting her past in Iran. Stretches of prose jostle with short poems and dreamscapes, more realist episodes are interrupted by elements reflecting aspects of Iranian literature, history and myth. This gives the overall narrative a determinedly-fragmented feel which partly mirrors Cyrus’s fragmented family history and fractured sense of self. But, for all its inventiveness, this is a fairly conventional novel something that becomes increasingly obvious. It’s an accomplished, gripping, well-crafted piece but sometimes that crafted-ness served to highlight Akbar’s background as a creative writing graduate. Some scenes felt heavily workshopped, overly polished in ways that muted their potential force �� the concluding variation on a redemption arc was definitely moving but it also tipped towards trite and sentimental.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Picador for an ARC

Rating: 3 to 3.5