Everyone carries broken shards of glass in their heart, and these fragments can be lifted into light, causing them to catch the image of the memories they carry. In Everything Sad is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri does just that: he lifted up a handful of broken memories and let them be reflected onto the pages of his book.
Daniel Nayeri has described Everything Sad is Untrue as an autobiographical novel, meaning it is a work of fiction greatly based on the true story of his life. The plot is one of intertwined snippets of story. These snippets are generally categorized into three categories: myth, legend, and history.
Daniel Nayeri chose not to confine his narrative and recounting to the Western mode of storytelling, rather organizing his memories into a structure similar to that of the Thousand and One Nights. He describes the structure throughout the novel as “counting his memories,” connecting the dots of his experiences. These experiences include Nayeri’s childhood experiences in Iran, in Italy, and in Oklahoma, where he, his mom, and his sister eventually ended up. He recounts his mother’s experience of converting to Christianity and her determination to stay true to it, his sister, Dina, throwing herself into her studies and school, and his own journey of gaining and losing both friends and bullies.
Nayeri consistently talks about how poop and food are the truest things about people throughout the book, causing many of the stories to revolve around the idea. While it is a great basis for stories, this idea also helped Nayeri work in some of the ways he overcame cultural differences and adversity. In the book, Daniel struggles with his classmates’ reactions to the unknown, especially in terms of food. I found this to be a helpful, and entertaining, way of seeing the cultural differences Nayeri had to face while growing up in Oklahoma. The way he was able to adapt to the new environment and culture was an incredible story to hear, especially as he drew connections between his memories and experiences.
Within the web of memories, Nayeri also reflects on whether or not his memories are accurate. One of the very first stories of the book is what he claims as his only memory of his grandfather. He goes into careful detail of what happened, doing a wonderful job making us readers feel that we are really there. Later, though, Nayeri discloses that what he told us is not the entire truth. When recounting the story to one of his relatives, he was told that it is not a fully accurate memory. This fits in with many other of the thoughts and ponderings sprinkled throughout the novel that question the reliability of what we remember and the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes, we tell ourselves things because we need to: we need something to believe in, something to keep close to our hearts. Nayeri explores this in many different ways, showing internal debates of story lessons, memory, and whether or not things matter. At all times, our minds are working to build the contents of our consciousness, and the book did a fantastic job capturing that.
Overall, Everything Sad is Untrue is a brilliant, carefully woven web of stories composed with the beautiful honesty of Daniel Nayeri. The shards he lifted into the light of writing created an incredible display full of character and truth, and it was such a gift to get to read it. He wrote with his hope, his pain, and most of all, his memory. Nayeri’s autobiographical novel is a colorful patchwork of the memories he has counted and bravely shared with us.
