I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that some of the most provocative and enjoyable writing is being published in the genre of young adult novels. Such is the case with Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story). In fact, I was so affected by this book that I have bought and given away several copies.
For 368 pages, you will walk in the shoes of middle-schooler, Khosrou Nayeri, age 12, an Iranian immigrant who has been transplanted to Edmund, Oklahoma, where he lives with his mother, his sister, and his difficult stepfather, Ray. Although the setting would seem to set Daniel on a fast path to misery, that’s anything but the truth, for Daniel is a storyteller, and he tells a delightfully clever, insightful story of his life in Oklahoma, as he recounts the cultural history of his family going back thousands of years even into the palaces of semi-ancient kings. It would be impossible dear listener to give you a summary of this book which wouldn’t seem scattered and jumbled, so I will give you a brief overview and hope, like Scheherazade’s King in 1001 Nights, you will check out this NPR 2020 Best Book of the Year and begin where I leave off.
The story is told in first-person narrative with shifts from telling his current situation sitting in the back of Mrs. Miller’s class, riding the poor kids’ bus, or home learning karate from his stepfather to the stories he has learned from his family and from his Persian culture. The stories are more than just heartwarming; they’re universal insomuch as they reflect the kinds of stories we all tell ourselves to preserve our memories, and the mental images of the people and places we have loved. Best of all, these tales are told with a spark of humor and compassion, lovingly voiced by a twelve-year old struggling to maintain his culture and to fit into the culture of Edmund, Oklahoma.
The story begins by claiming that “All Persians are liars,” which his Iranian father quickly corrects, saying that all Persians are “poets which is worse.” Thus, we are treated to a never-ending series of vignettes in the tradition of 1001 Nights. Khosrou, who his mother renamed David upon escaping Iran, assures us in the beginning that he is just “counting his own memories” and that we are the king in this telling. Frequently he addresses the reader, such as when he claims, “If I was Scheherazade, I would stop here and say, ‘O great and clever king,’ except I’d say, “Reader . . . I have never lied to you, even when a lie would save me the humiliation of the truth.” And many of Daniel’s tales are humiliating, such as when they had to escape Iran, or when they spent time in an Italian refugee camp where they were told, “don’t learn Italian; you’re not staying here.”
When they finally settle in Oklahoma, things for Daniel don’t improve much as he is a dark-skinned, hairy child who speaks with an accent and eats strange-smelling lunches. Yet even the grade-school teasing and the difficulties he encounters fitting in, don’t alter the strength he finds in the stories of his ancient Persian culture and in his hopes and dreams for the future. He knows from the 1001 stories of the past that he will be whole one day because “everything sad is untrue.” As Daniel suggests at the beginning of his tales, “In one version, maybe I’m not the refugee kid in the back of Mrs. Miller’s class. I’m a prince in disguise. If you catch me, I will say what they say in the 1001 Nights. ‘Let me go, and I will tell you a tale passing strange.’” I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Everything Sad is Untrue and let the prince tell you tales passing strange.
I’m Pat Tyrer from Canyon, Texas for the High-Plains-Public-Radio-Readers Book Club. Enjoy!
