Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng / ★★★★★
Summary: Lydia is dead. She is the favorite child of the Lee family, a mix-raced Chinese American family living in 1970s Ohio, and as the causes of her death unravel, the family tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.
Up there – eighty-five miles high, ninety, ninety-five, the counter said – everything on earth would be invisible. Mothers who disappeared, fathers who didn’t love you, kids who mocked you – everything would shrink to pinpoints and vanish. Up there: nothing but stars.
Genre: Contemporary/Fiction
Plot
This book UNDID me. It was so beautiful and sad and eloquently done, and while the premise is intriguing and sad, it’s the exploration of characters that really unwinds you. It’s a relatively short book, and yet Ng managed to take full hold of my heart and make me feel for this family before I hardly knew them, and by the end I was in shambles. The book opens with the knowledge of Lydia’s death, and alternates between past and present as the causes leading up to it unravel. It is done so smoothly and flawlessly it had me tearing up before I was even halfway through the book.
The story explores each different member of the family, their personal lives and their relationships with Lydia and with each other, and the effects of familial pressures, favoritism, prejudices, and social constructs. The way Ng wove back and forth in the timeline of events was flawless, and I loved how everything came together and came to light. This book is so sad and beautiful and I wish I could read it all over again for the first time.
Character
Character is where Ng really grabs me by the heart. None of her characters are perfect- in fact, they’re all painfully, heartrendingly flawed. And whether I like them or not, Ng makes me care about them and want what’s best for them, and every main character in this book chafed my heart in some way. I loved getting to know them through the skewed timeline, which revealed their faults and their brokenness their goodnesses all out of order, which I thought was brilliant. Some I liked before I disliked, and some I disliked before I liked. This style, and the story, formed beautifully rounded characters.
The relationships between the characters in the family are what made this book for me. I loved how the relationships between the various members of the Lee family were explored throughout the different stages of the story- whether it be between siblings, or sibling/parent, or both parents. The tensions and pressures of self-identity vs. public identity vs. cultural identity were done so thoroughly and wound so intricately in each of the characters. I loved the exploration of motherhood in this book – what a woman wants for herself, what she wants for her children, and what was expected of her, especially in a 1970s suburban setting. And I loved the relationships between the children- Lydia’s relationship with her brother, Nath, and the quiet observations of her little sister, Hannah, pained me in such a fantastic way. I love the characters so much it’s made it hard for me to become invested in characters in the book I picked up next, because I missed these ones.
Writing
Ng has such a gorgeous, fluid writing style. The way she weaves back and forth in time, in tense, in point of view astounds me. Ng has such a way of nailing emotions with littles phrases and intricacies that pain my word-loving heart in the very best way.
Was I satisfied?
I loved this book. I read it on an overnight airplane flight and cried sitting between two strangers, and then spent the last hour of my flight just thinking about it. It’s one of those books I wish I could erase my memory of so I can read it all over again, which is something I rarely say about sad books.
I’m so glad you liked it. Yes, it’s beautiful and sad. Hannah is my favorite character in the book
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I loved Hannah so much! My favorite was Nath, but Hannah was a definite second favorite.
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YAYYYYY also I’m sorry for not giving you a ‘don’t read this in the middle of the night between two strangers on a flight back from Alaska’ warning
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I don’t think I would have been able to help myself anyway….at least it was dark lol
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Stunning review, Steph! I loved this book so much and this review made me want to re-read it!
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Thank you!! I want to reread it already even though I just finished it! This book was BEAUTIFUL.
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I really liked this book too! Nice review 🙂
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Thank you!!
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Yay! I’m so thrilled that you loved this too, and you’ve totally nailed the experience of reading this and how it hurts so good.
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My book club read this book, and I completely agree that the characterization was excellent. I definitely agree about Hannah being a favorite, too. I’m glad you enjoyed it as well.
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That must have been a great book to read in a group! After I finished it, I immediately texted two friends who had already read it because I had so much I wanted to discuss. She packs so much into such a relatively short book!
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It was a great pick for the book club. It was from a year ago, but we all talk about it even now, lol.
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I so look forward to reading this. It’s also the first time I’ve seen it with another cover (usually it’s always a green one).. but I like it!! Great review!
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I hope you enjoy it!! It’s so sad but so good :’)
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I have heard so many great things about this book, so it makes me so happy to hear you liked this so much! 🙂 Seeing another glowing review from you just makes me even more anxious to give it a try. Thanks for sharing and, as always, fabulous review! ❤
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Oh I hope you really like it!! I can’t emphasize how much I loved it. Thank you so much!!
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I’m so late leaving a comment for this one, Steph, but I’m SO happy that you loved this book!! Great review!! I smiled so much when I saw your review on Goodreads and then on your blog! This book just makes me feel so many feelings that I don’t know where to begin…I hope after reading it you see why I enjoy teaching it so much in my Contemporary Lit Class! It’s been such a favorite for most of my students 🙂 I hope you are doing well!!
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Thank you!! I would have LOVED to study this book in school, there is so much to do with it and so many angles to come at it from. I’d have loved to analyze these characters. It must be such a joy to be able to share it with your students!! I just want everyone to read it, lol.
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You are welcome! It is such a joy to teach it 🙂 I always look forward to it every semester! You are right; there is so much to do with it, which is what makes it so remarkable! This semester we analyzed it using the different critical literary lenses: feminist, reader-response, archetypal, structuralism, Jungian, Freudian, gender, etc. That was the first time I have done it that way, and it was so much fun! They came up with some AMAZING essays, and they were all so different since they were critiqued so differently! And I agree-I want everyone to read this book too!! 🙂
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Ahhh oh my gosh, I think I would have loved to be in your class! That sounds FASCINATING! It amazes me that such a small book packs so much, and how many different conflicts there are going on within the one family. I think I would have loved to analyze the sibling relationships…especially Hannah’s role in the family, she broke my heart.
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Ha! You’re too sweet and that would have be so much fun if you had of been 🙂 I’m not sure all my students feel that way right now with only 3 weeks of classes left and finals looming though!! It is such an amazing book because of all the character dynamics and conflicts-I would love to see it made into a movie, but then I’m afraid they would mess it up! Oh, yes! Hannah! I always cry for Hannah too- how invisible she is in the family. Most people seem to relate to her more than they do the other characters!
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Great review! I loved this book, though it certainly wasn’t the most uplifting thing I’ve read. I can’t wait to read Little Fires Everywhere and to see what else Ng writes in the future!
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Thank you!! You definitely have to be in the mood for something sad when you read it, lol. I hope you like Little Fires!! I really liked that one, too.
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