Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri Book Review
Published by Levine Querido in 2020
ISBN: 978-1646140008
Summary: The book starts with Khosrou Nayeri and a memory of him spending time in Iran with his grandpa. He tells the reader to call him Daniel in order to not have to worry about pronouncing his first name. His mom, sister, and he all live in Oklahoma while his dad is still back in Iran. Daniel tells several stories and interweaves them throughout the book. Daniel is bullied at school so he avoids it as much as possible. His mom was a doctor in Iran but the degree doesn't transfer over to the US so she must take whatever job she can find. Her mom marries a man in the USA who is abusive but it allows the family to survive. They go back to Iran but his mom joins a secret church where she is found out. This causes them to become refugees which is kind of a flashback of how they made their way to the US. Ray is abusive towards his mom again and they leave for good. The story ends with him going back to the beginning of the book with his grandpa in another memory moment and he has hope that one day everything will be okay.
Critical Analysis: This book is sure to be a heartwrencher for anyone who takes the time to put themselves into Daniel's shoes as he weaves many different stories and memories together. Daniel shows his very human side with the bullying as wells as the insecurities of him telling his story. Daniel talks very strongly about his mother and paints her in a wonderful light as she was doing what she needed to in order to take care of her children. This book radiates hope as Daniel tells his life story and how good things can come out of the most dire and terrible situation. Religion is also brought up many times throuhout the story as something that can connect but also something that divides people.
Review: Kirkus Book Review
Every story is the sound of a storyteller begging to stay alive.” Khosrou, the child, stands before his class in Oklahoma and tells stories of Iran, lifetimes’ worth of experiences compressed into writing prompts. Daniel, the adult, pieces together his “patchwork” past to stitch a quilt of memory in a free-wheeling, layered manner more reminiscent of a conversation than a text. At its most basic level, Nayeri’s offering is a fictionalized refugee’s memoir, an adult looking back at his childhood and the forced adoption of a new and infinitely more difficult life. Yet somehow “memoir” fails to do justice to the scope of the narrative, the self-proclaimed antithesis of just another “ ‘poor me’ tale of immigrant woe.” Like Scheherazade, Nayeri spins 1,001 tales: In under 400 pages he recounts Persian myth and history, leads readers through days banal and outstanding, waxes philosophical on the nature of life and love, and more. Not “beholden” to the linear conventions of Western storytelling, the story might come across as disjointed, but the various anecdotes are underscored by a painful coherence as they work to illuminate not only a larger story, but a life. And there is beauty amid the pain as well as laughter. The soul-sapping hopelessness of a refugee camp is treated with the same dramatic import as the struggle to eliminate on Western toilets. The language is evocative: simple yet precise, rife with the idiosyncratic and abjectly honest imagery characteristic of a child’s imagination. (This review has been updated to clarify that the book is a work of fiction.)A modern epic. (author’s note, acknowledgments) (Historical fiction. 10-18)
Connections: Students can do research on religious persecution around the world.
Students can also look into refugee camps as well as what the US is doing to support refugees in the United States.
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