Today’s matchup gives us a pair of 
weird literary novels, each weird in their own way and they were both books that I loved, so it made for a difficult choice. I think, though, that Akbar’s prose was just a touch more to my delight even if the coincidence central to the plot was maybe a bit much.
My judgment on the judgment
If you’re wondering where you’ve heard Kelly McEvers’s name before and didn’t bother to read her bio, she’s an on-air personality at NPR and also married to my fellow Tampa MFA graduate Nathan Deuel who was a judge in the tournament of books a few years back. As a journalist, she comes at the judging in a unique manner, borowing the This American Life metric of whether a story was surprising and in a well-reasoned decision comes to the same conclusion that I did, that Martyr! is the book to advance. My brackets on the left side continue to remain intact.
Leave a Reply