Book review: Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram

(cover image courtesy Penguin Books Australia)

Returning to spend time with a literary character you love is always fraught with a little bit of trepidation.

Much like catching up again with someone with whom you really hit it off, there’s always this nagging worry that the magic won’t be there in quite the same way as it was before and that the novelty will have worn off.

Thankfully, those fears aren’t enough close to being realised in Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram, the follow-up novel to 2019’s Darius the Great is Not Okay which introduced to Portland-based Darius Kellner, a self-described “Fractional Persian” who is grappling with a host of issues as he navigates the tricky path to growing up.

In the original book, Darius went with his family – white dad Stephen, Iranian mother Shirin and younger sister Laleh – to visit family in Iran, a revelatory trip that not only helped Darius establish close bonds with his Babou and Maman, Shirin’s father and mother, but helped him come to terms with the fact that he is gay all while rebuilding an estranged relationship with his dad.

A lot went on in that book, and while Darius didn’t always get everything right since he is a teenager and mistakes are part of the messy journey to adulthood, he got enough right to come to America relatively transformed, his soccer skills enhanced, a best friend in Sohrab back in Yazd, Iran and a shot at actually moving out of his shell and joining the world of high school from which he has previously been excluded.

“I want to build a force field around my sister, to shield her from Micah and Emily and her teacher and all the other Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy lurking in her future.

I hated how helpless I was.

‘Is there something I can do?’

Laleh shook her head again, and then turned back to her book, like she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

I leaned over and kissed the crown of her head.

‘Love you Laleh,’ I whispered into her hair. (P. 101)

As Darius the Great Deserves Better opens, our eponymous protagonist is getting along beautifully with his dad, with whom he shares an ongoing struggle with depression, he’s regularly calling Maman and Sohrab, he has a boyfriend in the handsome and culinarily-skilled Landon Edwards and he has a place on the school’s soccer team and friends, actual friends, who invite to parties and to do homework together.

He even has a job at Rose City, a tea emporium, which is his dream job since if there’s one thing Darius loves, it’s tea, with Darius the Great Deserves Better being full of references to all kinds of delicious and fragrantly exotic teas.

That’s a lot going right for the once almost housebound Darius, and he’s happy in a lot of ways but as anyone who has ever struggled with mental health all while growing up knows all too well, that is not even remotely the end of the story, and Khorram, who writes with warm sincerity and insightful likeability, does justice to what it feels like to seemingly have the world at your feet at last and yet feel like it’s all a mirage or if its is real, it’s slipping from your grasp.

And in many ways, that’s exactly how it feels to Darius who is charmingly sweet, sincere and bighearted guy who deserves all the good things and then some; in no time, his dad has to be away for work, his paternal grandmothers arrive for an extended stay which is a problem because they don’t seem to like him all that much, Sohrab is MIA in Skype-land, and his dream job doesn’t feel so dreamy after all.

(image courtesy official Addib Khorram Twitter account)

It might be all in his head or it might not, but Khorram is empathetically understanding if his protagonist every step of the way, investing this delightful and authentically queer young man with a huge amount of likeability, honesty and winning vulnerability.

Being back with Darius is a real joy, not simply because his story is far from over – there’s a lot new to tell and it’s told brilliantly well – but because for anyone who has grown up queer, Darius’s story is a real affirming pleasure to read because it confirms for you that what you thought and felt was real and true and not the product of your imagination.

Addressing issues of bullying and peer alienation, of nascent sexuality, sibling relationships and the way in which connections reshape between parents and children as the latter grow up, and of following your passions, Darius the Great Deserves Better is a rich treasure trove of lived experience that feels so close to what many of us went through.

But it doesn’t matter whether you’re queer or not, Darius the Great Deserves Better has a great deal to say, especially on the issue of mental health which is treated as simply another thing to be dealt with; serious, yes, but not the big bogeyman the world still seems to be treat it as, and something which can be worked through and which is a part of the person dealing with the issues.

It'[s this willingness to face up to a whole host of once-taboo topics such as homosexuality, being mixed race and dealing with mental health issues that invests this beautifully-realised novel with the kind of freeing honesty which elicits a sigh of relief that here is someone who gets what it’s like to grow up queer, or just grow up full stop, and who is able to reassure you the Young Adult demographic reading it (and older readers and reviewers such as yours truly who need some reassurance, even years after being a teenager, that what they felt made sense)

“My stomach did a little flip.

I didn’t know what to say.

And I got this really ugly feeling.

Like Landon only wanted sex from me.

I knew that wasn’t fair. I knew he really cared about me. But I couldn’t help it.

That’s normal.

Right?

‘Think about it,’ Landon said, and kissed me on the shoulder.

‘Okay?’

‘Okay.'” (P. 264)

At its heart, Darius the Great Deserves Better is a lot of things – a love letter to every aspect of who you are, all of which should be valued and treasured for the person they make you, to tea and food, family and friends, fun and serious purpose; in other words, the full and glorious spectrum of what it means to be alive and to be a unique individual who in Darius’s case is still figuring out, in good ways and bad, what that person is going to look like.

At least, for now since as we all know, everyone changes throughout life and who you are now is not who you’ll always be.

For now, Darius us doing just fine; he may not always feel like he does, and sure life could be better (true for all of us, no matter where we are in life) but as he grapples with attraction to his surprise close friend Chip (who may just like him back), with the ups and downs of family life (including one big traumatic event), with working, loving and studying, you can help but love Darius because he is so real, authentic and sweetly honest.

Darius is, without a doubt, one of the most identifiable with protagonists this reviewer has ever come across in a book because Khorram allows him, and thus allows us, to ask himself a ton of pressing, important and often hidden away questions and to come away with answers, some fully-realised, some not (such is life) in a way that makes real sense in the midst of the mess and confusion that is being alive.

Darius the Great Deserves Better is a gem of a book – truthful, emotionally evocative, funny, sweet, raw and honest, affirming and unsettling, it is life distilled down to its nascent bits, articulating what it’s like to be in the vortex of growing up, especially as a queer young man, and to begin to figure where you want to head next in ways that don’t feel trite but which speak to how life is a series of unfinished moments, all of which have a place on our journey to wherever it is we are going next.

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