🧨 Is All Fours Brilliant or Unreadable? And Did Martyr! Just Beat It as the Novel of the Year?

In a year of bold, dis­obe­di­ent fic­tion, two books have fierce­ly divid­ed read­ers: All Fours by Miran­da July and Mar­tyr! by Kaveh Akbar. One is described as “a raw mas­ter­piece,” the oth­er as “self-indul­gent non­sense.” The twist? Those descrip­tions apply to both, depend­ing on who you ask.

So what’s real­ly going on? Did Mar­tyr! just edge out All Fours as the defin­i­tive nov­el of 2024—or are we wit­ness­ing two equal­ly polar­iz­ing, bril­liant fail­ures?

Let’s break it down.

📘 All Fours — Miranda July’s Most Intimate (and Alienating?) Work Yet

What it’s about:
A mid­dle-aged woman leaves her mar­riage and embarks on a sex-and-self-dis­cov­ery road trip. But this is Miran­da July—so what unfolds isn’t plot-heavy dra­ma but a stream of hyper-detailed obser­va­tions, awk­ward encoun­ters, and bizarre, poet­ic self-reflec­tion.

Why some call it a mas­ter­piece:

• 🔹 Rad­i­cal­ly hon­est: July dis­sects female desire, shame, aging, and iden­ti­ty with unnerv­ing close­ness.
• 🔹 Styl­is­ti­cal­ly fear­less: The prose is frac­tured, diaris­tic, inti­mate. It feels like read­ing someone’s secret brain.
• 🔹 Inven­tive struc­ture: The lack of con­ven­tion­al plot is, for fans, the whole point—this is inner life, not out­er action.

Why oth­ers call it unbear­able:

• 🔸 Plot­less and slow: For read­ers crav­ing struc­ture or momen­tum, it feels like a long, drawn-out jour­nal entry.
• 🔸 Emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing: The book swims in ambi­gu­i­ty, dis­com­fort, and stag­na­tion. There’s lit­tle relief or res­o­lu­tion.
• 🔸 Hard to empathize: Some see the protagonist’s self-absorp­tion as frus­trat­ing or even alien­at­ing.

🧠 Ver­dict: All Fours is not try­ing to be lik­able. It’s try­ing to be true—and for some, that’s more than enough. For oth­ers, it’s just… too much.

📕 Martyr! — Kaveh Akbar’s Lyrical, Political, Form-Bending Novel

What it’s about:
Cyrus, an Iran­ian-Amer­i­can, explores iden­ti­ty, addic­tion, and faith through a jour­ney that blends aut­ofic­tion, poet­ry, doc­u­ments, hal­lu­ci­na­tions, and ghosts. It’s part reli­gious reck­on­ing, part cul­tur­al dis­sec­tion, and whol­ly genre-bend­ing.

Why some hail it as genius:

• 🔹 Lan­guage on fire: Every sen­tence feels craft­ed by a poet (because it is). The rhythm sings, the metaphors shock.
• 🔹 Ambi­tious scope: It grap­ples with mar­tyr­dom, immi­grant iden­ti­ty, Islam­o­pho­bia, and spir­i­tu­al longing—head-on.
• 🔹 Nar­ra­tive kalei­do­scope: Let­ters, scripts, dream fragments—it explodes the bound­aries of what a nov­el can be.

Why oth­ers are exhaust­ed by it:

• 🔸 Over­ly cere­bral: The sym­bol­ism is thick, the ref­er­ences dense. Some feel it’s more the­sis than sto­ry.
• 🔸 Hard to fol­low: With its frac­tured struc­ture, it’s easy to feel lost. It demands a lot from the read­er.
• 🔸 Char­ac­ter dis­tance: Some read­ers strug­gle to emo­tion­al­ly invest in Cyrus as a char­ac­ter amid the high-con­cept prose.

🧠 Ver­dict: Mar­tyr! is lit­er­a­ture with a cap­i­tal “L.” If All Fours whis­pers, Mar­tyr! preaches—and that voice is either tran­scen­dent or too loud, depend­ing on your mood.

🔥 So Which Book “Wins” 2024?

That depends on what you think lit­er­a­ture is for.

Nei­ther book is safe. Nei­ther is easy. Both are deeply per­son­al, cul­tur­al­ly urgent, and—yes—divisive.

So we ask:

💬 What’s Your Verdict?

• Is All Fours a nar­cis­sis­tic thought spi­ral or a fem­i­nist tri­umph?
• Is Mar­tyr! a poet­ic mas­ter­piece or just beau­ti­ful­ly dis­guised con­fu­sion?
• Which one stuck with you longer—emotionally, or intel­lec­tu­al­ly?
• And most impor­tant­ly…
  What does it say about you if you loved one and hat­ed the oth­er?

Let’s argue in the com­ments. Civil­ly. Or not.