Everything Sad Is Untrue

Starred review from June 15, 2020
Marked by a distinctive voice—a straightforward mix of confiding, slyly humorous, and unsentimentally sorrowful—Nayeri’s (Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow) impressive autobiographical novel is narrated by 12-year-old Khosrou, known as Daniel, who models himself after the legendary Scheherazade. The chapterless “patchwork story” follows Daniel through his dreamlike early childhood in Iran, a year in an Italian refugee camp with his sister and “unstoppable” mother (but without his larger-than-life father, who chose to stay behind), and their eventual asylum in Oklahoma. The text moves nimbly back and forth in time, depicting with equal vividness ancient Persian tales (a jasmine-scented village with saffron fields, courtyards, and fountains), family history (a legendary ancestral doctor), and the challenges of navigating life as an outsider in “a land of concrete and weathermen.” Interspersed with his experiences is the narrator’s accumulated wisdom on a broad range of subjects—cultural differences in bathroom habits, the creation of Persian rugs, the roots of today’s conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis—which help establish Daniel’s identity as a knowledgeable, thoughtful storyteller. Mesmerizing and hard-hitting at once, this work of personal mythology is a rare treasure of a book. Ages 10–up. Agent: Joanna Volpe, New Leaf Literary.

Starred review from July 1, 2020

Gr 4-8- Nayeri weaves stories within stories in this fictionalized account of his formative years. He shares layers of rich information about life in Iran, refugee camps, and his experiences as an immigrant in the United States during the late 20th century. The themes of family, love, and truth are as strong as those of faith, endurance, memory, and storytelling as Khosrou (also known as Daniel) tries to tell the tales of his beautiful, complicated life and family. Nayeri provides clues about other characters without overexplaining them. Tough issues are discussed, particularly domestic violence, bullying, and life as a refugee and an immigrant, but there is levity, too. Khosrou's thoughts on Manwich sloppy joe sauce, using toilets in the U.S., and his father's overindulgence in Twinkies all lighten this tale. Without being didactic, the text communicates the universality of the human experience and the lack of empathy shown by some, not all, of those he encounters in the U.S. and in the refugee environments. The strongest developed characters are Daniel and his mother; however, readers experience varying levels of complexities of other characters like Daniel's father, stepfather, sister, teacher, and his friends (and enemies). VERDICT At once beautiful and painful, this timely story is highly recommended for middle grade readers.-Hilary Writt, formerly at Sullivan Univ., Lexington, KY

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Starred review from May 15, 2020
"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)

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Starred review from July 1, 2020
Grades 7-12 *Starred Review* A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee. It's with this refrain that 12-year-old Khosrou, known as Daniel to his skeptical Oklahoman classmates, tells a version of his life story. In the tradition of 1,001 Nights' Scheherazade, he gathers up the loose strands of his memory, weaving short personal vignettes into the Persian histories, myths, and legends that are his ancestry. The result is a winding series of digressions that takes the reader on a journey as intimate as it is epic, knitting together a tale of Daniel's youth in Iran, the perilous flight from home with his sister and mother, and their oppressive new beginning as refugees in Oklahoma. It's a story heavy with loss (of home, of his left-behind father, of innocence), light with humor and love (for his mother, the unstoppable force ), rich in culture and language (and, somehow, never sentimental). Walking the line between fiction and non-, this is a kind of meta-memoir, a story about the stories that define us. It's a novel, narrated conversationally?and poetically?by a boy reaching for the truth in his fading youth. Nayeri challenges outright what young readers can handle, in form and content, but who can deny him when it's his own experience on display? He demands much of readers, but in return he gives them everything. A remarkable work that raises the literary bar in children's lit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)