4/4.5 stars

I had no idea what this book was about no matter how many times I read a synopsis... and I think that's because there's no way to do it justice. The book felt just so unique because of those niche topics I never would've known about and/or expected to read about in a novel, like the tradition of martyrdom, the downing of the flight in Iran, and art ala-"The Artist is Present". It may have just been due to the topic, but I was reminded of Brandon Taylor's <[b:Real Life|46263943|Real Life|Brandon Taylor|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563301717l/46263943._SY75_.jpg|71259920]. The writing here was also obviously beautiful and poetic (not shocking).

After listening to the NPR Nerdette podcast review, I agree that the ending felt a bit "jump-the-shark"-ish, which I struggled with, but I still loved this book. Partially through the book, I got busy and wasn't able to devote as much time each day to reading it, which caused my enthusiasm to lag a bit, but I think if I had more time to dive in, I would've finished this quicker and loved it even more. I did like the chapters focusing on Cyrus more than the other characters and don't always love when books switch perspectives amongst several people, but the podcast I listened to made a good point that the topics and characters explored are so interesting. (Basically I guess I just agree with every point they made lol).

His friendship with Hanif Abdurraqib tells me all I need to know that I will eat up anything either of those two put out.

Anyways go read this book!!

I highlighted too much, so this is just a fraction of those highlights :)

-What was left of his life had no intrinsic meaning, he knew, since such meaning could only be shaped in relation to other people.
-Living happened until it didn’t. There was no choice in it. To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence.
-It’s possible… that the experience of gratitude was itself a luxury, a topless convertible driven through a rainless life.
-“Expendable” may seem like a bad word to use to describe your own life, expect I actually find it liberating. The way it vents away all pressure to become. How it asks only that you be.
-Addiction is an old country song: you lose the dog, lose the truck, lose the high school sweetheart. In recovery you play the song backward, and that’s where things get interesting. Where’d you find the truck? Did the dog remember you? What’d your sweetheart say when they saw you again… Active addiction is an algorithm, a crushing sameness. The story is what comes after.
-Dreams give us voices, visions, ideas, mortal terrors, and departed beloveds. Nothing counts more to an individual, or less to an empire.
-But Cyrus was doing everything he was supposed to do. Sobriety, writing. What was the point if every road led back to the same shame?
-It felt like the only time Cyrus ever really felt now-ness was when he was using. When now was physiologically, chemically discernible from before. Otherwise he felt completely awash in time: stuck between birth and death, an interval where he’d never quite gotten his footing. But he was also awash in in the world and its checkboxes—neither Iranian nor American, neither Muslim nor not-Muslim, neither drunk nor in meaningful recovery, neither gay nor straight. Each camp thought he was too much the other thing. That there were camps at all made his head swim.
-Getting sober means having to figure out how to spend 24 hours a day. It means building an entirely new personality, learning how to move your face, your fingers… There’s no abstinence in it. There’s no self-will. It’s a chisel. It’s surrender to the chisel. Of course you don’t hope to come out a David. It’s a miracle enough to emerge still standing on 2 feet.
-We spend our lives trying to figure out how to pay back the debt of being. And to whom we might pay it. But that’s a misunderstanding of grace, which doesn’t ask to be paid back.
-An alphabet, like a life, is a finite set of shapes. With it, one can produce almost anything.
-He understood, with a clarity that had until that moment in his life eluded him, that he was not at all made for the world in which he lived, that art and writing had gotten him only trivially closer to compensating for that fundamental defectiveness, the way standing on a roof gets one only trivially closer to grabbing the moon than standing in the dirt.
-Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus understood that now, and stepped.