Book Review | Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Before we dive into the deep end, I just wanted to give a quick overview of the novel's plot. The novel follows the story of Lydia Lee, the middle, and favourite, child of James (Chinese-American) and Marilyn (blonde-hair, blue-eyed American) Lee. She's the "golden child" who's life is all planned out for her to fulfil the dreams her parents could not. So when her body is dragged from the local lake (not a spoiler, you find this out on the first page), the family are sent into despair wondering: what was Lydia's life actually like?
Set in 1970's Ohio, racial tensions are at the forefront of this novel alongside gender inequalities, interracial marriages/relationships, grief/loss, sexuality, family and expectations. This novel is incredibly sad in places and takes the reader to some really dark places, so I would definitely approach with caution.
The Lee family are at the centre of the novel, and as the story progresses we learn more and more about James and Marilyn, and their three children (Nath the eldest, Lydia, and Hannah the youngest daughter). The novel raises issues of unfulfilled dreams, where life takes its own course and we can often loose ourselves and our hopes along the way. This is particularly the case for Marilyn Lee, who fails to communicate her unfulfilled desires with her husband and ultimately loses herself in the process. This consequently leads to the pressures placed on Lydia to fulfil her Mother's dreams of being a female doctor in 1970's America, which was pretty much unheard of at the time. I think a lot of children can probably empathise with these feelings of pressure from parents, which makes the novel realistic and relatable in this sense. Another relatable aspect is the pressure of purely being a teenager. The pressure to keep up good grades, attendance, friends, socialising, a good relationship with their parents, and how this can get too much for some children - something I think we sadly hear too much of these days. One of the things I like most about this book is that it makes the reader, specifically parents, ask questions like: how do we support our children? Do we really listen to them? Do we know the people they are and the people they aspire to be? Therefore, I think it would be really insightful to know how a parent would feel after reading Ng's work.
Although this book had a lot of positives, I would only rate it 3 stars on Good Reads for a few reasons. The story is not so much plot driven as it is a character study, as Ng dives deep into who these characters really are and what drives them as people. Saying that, none of the characters are particularly likeable, not even "golden child" Lydia, and the narrative is quite heavy and depressing (so please tread carefully if you are not feeling up to it). The chapters are long and for me, this book was not a quick read and I felt it worked best during long sittings of reading compared to shorter bouts, which might not suit every reader. I also found the "favourite child" element of this book over-exaggerated and taken to the extreme which made it unrealistic, where the other Lee children, especially Hannah, are practically invisible.
Not long after finishing this book I watched 'Little Fires Everywhere', a series based off Ng's other novel available on Amazon Prime. This too dealt with issues of race, family, interracial relationships, institutionalised racism, and white privilege - all things that increasingly need to be discussed in current times. Although I have only seen the series and not read the book, I have to admit I enjoyed watching Ng's work compared to reading it. To me, this suggests Little Fires Everywhere might be a better place to start if you wish to start reading Celeste Ng. As Everything I Never Told You was Ng's debut novel, I think some of the issues raised with her writing are ironed out in her second, but I would have to read the novel to be sure of that.
To round-off, if Celeste Ng is on your TBR list then I definitely recommend you get stuck in. If you pick up Everything I Never Told You expecting a plot-driven thriller/mystery then you're in for a shock, but if your up for a deep story with some difficult home truths, then Celeste Ng is definitely for you. If you've read any of Ng's work feel free to leave a comment down below or reach out to me on my socials, I'd love to hear what you think, and I'll see you on Friday for another blog post! Lots of love xoxo
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