This fact was eventually discovered by the authorities. Things went south for them when a series of strange, violent, and miraculous events led Daniel’s mother to convert to Christinianty. His mother, a doctor, and his father, a loving scoundrel, provided well for their children, and had few troubles to speak of. The straightforward, linear account of his childhood goes as follows: Daniel lived in a beautiful house with his father, mother, and brilliant sister. And Persian rugs, he frequently reminds us, have flaws. Taking One Thousand and One Nights ’ Scheherazade as his model story-teller, Nayeri relates his personal experiences as strands in a complicated Persian rug. He does not balk at telling his own life story as if it were a myth, nor does he regard it as any less true because it is also chimerical. Indeed, the author stops frequently to reflect on the tricks that imagination plays on memory, including on one’s familial and cultural history. His earliest memories were happy, though colored and embellished by hindsight. Once upon a time, Daniel was called Khosrou, and he lived in Iran.

Moving back-and-forth in time, weaving from strands of lives present and ancestral that formed him, Daniel relates his family’s complicated journey from Iran to Oklahoma. Yet as nearly as I can tell, what some readers really object to about this story is that it happened, and they would rather that it didn’t. There are a few problems, which I’ll address shortly. By that I mean that is fairly well-written – if you can get past the circuitous and chummy style – and that the content is substantive, and (mostly) edifying. To paraphrase several online comments, “I’m sorry all of that terrible stuff happened to the author, but is this really appropriate for children?” After finishing Nayeri’s nonlinear refugee memoir, I can’t help but wonder if we were all reading the same book.Įverything Sad is a good book.

Parent reviewers complained of violence, and gave the impression that the author indulged in the kind of grittiness that mistakes mere excess for depth. I thought Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue was going to be one of those kinds of books.

Sad is untrue