How to live and die with a bang?

Life, so consistently inconsistent; un tameable and un frameable. Yet, the protagonist agonizes over the why and the how to live a worthy life and how to die a worthy death.

Kaveh Akbar is naturally “cool” while boldly honest in addressing some of the biggest topics out there: death, life, empathy, cruelty, racism, immigration, love.

His is not a story of rushing towards the happy ending. Nor the typical problem, obstacle, resolution formula. His is true life; a stop and go, a two paces forward then four paces back road that is walked on crawled on raced down and passed out on.

The secondary characters are just as deeply introspective, albeit not as “obsessed” as the protagonist in their self-scrutiny and soul-searching. Learning as they move through life towards death.

Witty, funny, bare naked in acknowledging that maybe imperfection and unanswered questions are the way things are…period. Amid confusion, chaos and fog, humans live until they don’t and things happen until they don’t. This matter of factness acts as a vitamin or bandage to a life bumpy and lumpy: It is the realization that you either choose do or you choose don’t.

Reading Kaveh Akbar is like exhaling.