Book Review: Sara Jafari's 'Things Left Unsaid' is a tale of tentative lovers who keep connecting

Associated Press

21-04-2025

Sara Jafari's 'Things Left Unsaid' is a love-craving, tumbling tale of two Iranian British friends who first meet in high school — the self-skeptic and pessimist Shirin Bayat, and the traumatized Kian Rahimi.
Kian was 15 years old when his older brother, Mehdi, was incarcerated and blames himself partly for what happened. Shirin, for her part, battles anxiety and depression.
In high school in the northern English city of Hull, Shirin falls in love with Kian, her only close male friend, but she can't open up to him about it. Kian feels the same about Shirin; he fancies her and imagines her lips on his, but kept it quiet.
Shirin and Kian both went their separate ways after school until 10 years later when they unexpectedly meet again at a friend's party in London. They have a lot in common: They have both faced discrimination — they were their school's only two non-white students and now Shirim finds the same situation at work.
Shirin kept thinking of Kian throughout the decade-long separation. Even though Shirin kept in touch with her female friends from her high school days, she always had a sense of unfulfillment, a sense of pessimism and skepticism. Her parents had separated when she was in college.
'Shirin thinks there is an ugliness inside her sometimes, some kind of repressed anger that she takes out on other people in her mind,' the author writes.
But her thoughts of Kian, and her desire for them to be together again one day, give her a sense of hope and relief.
When the two reunite again in London at their friend Millie's 27th birthday party, Shirin's love for her old friend resurfaces. But it comes a little too late: Salma, who Kian was now seeing, is also at the party. Shirin even asks Kian to kiss her, but he doesn't because she's drunk.
These would-be lovers have one final meeting — at a dinner party in New York in 2020, where Kian is now living. She confesses to having a lot of regrets and that she had been thinking about him during their decade-long separation. Kian confesses he had imagined her kissing him while they were in school.
'Why didn't we make it work?' Kian asks, adding that he wanted it to. Shirin responds with 'I want that, too…'
Could this time be the time they finally get together? Or has a gulf developed between them?
Beautifully written in simple language, the London-based British Iranian author Jafari continuously pulls anxious readers along to find out what becomes of Shirin's and Kian's craving for each other.
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