Celeste Ng

A first novel by a Pushcart Prize-winning writer explores the fallout of a favorite daughter's shattering death on a Chinese-American family in 1970s Ohio.

Everything I Never Told You

Amazon.com's #1 Book of the Year 2014 Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened. Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Shahab Valizadeh

His mother had died his second year, a tumour blossoming in her brain.

"Some of the equipment in the shop would be difficult for you to use," he told her. "And to be honest, Miss Walker, having a girl like you in the classroom would be very distracting to the boys in the class."

lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.

Syrina Akbari

The first disappointment in his son, this first and most painful puncture in his fatherly dreams

wanted to press his lips to the tender hollow where Marilyn’s lifeline and love line crossed

They didn’t understand his answers, but they’d nodded, pleased that James was learning things they did not know.

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest of the family-Hannah-who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another"--

bianca

And tomorrow, next month, next year? It will take a long time. Years from now, they will still be arranging the pieces they know, puzzling over her features, redrawing her outlines in their minds. Sure that they’ve got her right this time, positive in this moment that they understand her completely, at last. They will think of her often: when Marilyn opens the curtains in Lydia’s room, opens the closet, and begins to take the clothing from the shelves. When their father, one day, enters a party and for the first time does not glance, quickly, at all the blond heads in the room. When Hannah begins to stand a little straighter, when she begins to speak a bit clearer, when one day she flicks her hair behind her ear in a familiar gesture and wonders, for a moment, where she got it. And Nath. When at school people ask if he has siblings: two sisters, but one died; when, one day, he looks at the small bump that will always mar the bridge of Jack’s nose and wants to trace it, gently, with his finger. When, a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn’t know this yet, but he senses it deep down in his core. 

So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.

He can guess, but he won’t ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she’d never told him. Whether she thought he’d failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.

Still, part of her longs to go back for one instant

—not to change anything, not even to speak to Lydia, not to tell her anything at all. 

Just to open the door and see her daughter there, asleep, one more time, and know all was well.

Some things they will never discuss: James will never talk to Louisa again, and he will be ashamed of this for as long as he lives. Later, slowly, they will piece together other things that have never been said. He will show her the coroner’s report; she will press the cookbook into his hands. How long it will be before he speaks to his son without flint in his voice; how long it will be before Nath no longer flinches when his father speaks. For the rest of the summer, and for years after that, they will grope for the words that say what they mean: to Nath, to Hannah, to each other. 

Ever since that summer, she had been so afraid—of losing her mother, of losing her father. And, after a while, the biggest fear of all: of losing Nath, the only one who understood the strange and brittle balance in their family. Who knew all that had happened. Who had always kept her afloat. 

That long-ago day, sitting in this very spot on the dock, she had already begun to feel it: how hard it would be to inherit their parents’ dreams. How suffocating to be so loved.

Before that she hadn’t realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it. Anything her mother wanted, she had promised. As long as she would stay. She had been so afraid.

Instead, they will dissect this last evening for years to come. What had they missed that they should have seen? What small gesture, forgotten, might have changed everything? They will pick it down to the bones, wondering how this had all gone so wrong, and they will never be sure.

All their lives Nath had understood, better than anyone, the lexicon of their family, the things they could never truly explain to outsiders: that a book or a dress meant more than something to read or something to wear; 

that attention came with expectations that—like snow—drifted and settled and crushed you with their weight.

 All the words were right, but in this new Nath’s voice, they sounded trivial and brittle and hollow. The way anyone else might have heard them. Already her brother had become a stranger.

And then, as if the tears are telescopes, she begins to see more clearly: the shredded posters and pictures, the rubble of books, the shelf prostrate at her feet. 

Everything that she had wanted for Lydia, which Lydia had never wanted but had embraced anyway.

 A dull chill creeps over her. Perhaps—and this thought chokes her—that had dragged Lydia underwater at last.

You loved so hard and hoped so much and then you ended up with nothing.

 Children who no longer needed you. A husband who no longer wanted you. Nothing left but you, alone, and empty space.

So she told him how, after the moon landing, he had bounded across the lawn, pretending to be Neil Armstrong, for days. How, in the sixth grade, he’d convinced the librarian to let him borrow from the adults’ section and brought home textbooks on physics, flight mechanics, aerodynamics. How he’d asked for a telescope for his fourteenth birthday and received a clock radio instead; how he’d saved his allowance and bought himself one. How, sometimes, at dinner, Nath never said a word about his day, because their parents never asked.

She could not mistake it. She recognized it at once: love, one-way deep adoration that bounced off and did not bounce back; 

careful, quiet love that didn’t care and went on anyway.

“You know what I mean. If she’d been a white girl—” The words are ash-bitter on his tongue. If she’d been a white girl. If I’d been a white man. “She would have fit in.” 

For moving would never have been enough; he sees that now. It would have been the same anywhere. Children of Mixed Backgrounds Often Struggle to Find Their Place. The mistake was earlier, deeper, more fundamental: it had happened the morning they’d married, when the justice of the peace had looked at Marilyn and she had said yes. Or earlier, on that first afternoon they’d spent together, when he had stood beside the bed, naked and shy, and she had twined her legs around his waist and pulled him toward her. Earlier yet: on that first day, when she’d leaned across his desk and kissed him, knocking the breath out of him like a swift, sharp punch. A million little chances to change the future. They should never have married. He should never have touched her. She should have turned around, stepped out of his office into the hallway, walked away. He sees with utter clarity: none of this was supposed to happen. A mistake. 

“Your mother was right, after all,” he says. “You should have married someone more like you.”

People decide what you’re like before they even get to know you. They think they know all about you. Except you’re never who they think you are.

Sometimes you almost forgot: that you didn’t look like everyone else. In homeroom or at the drugstore or at the supermarket, you listened to morning announcements or dropped off a roll of film or picked out a carton of eggs and felt like just another someone in the crowd. Sometimes you didn’t think about it at all. And then sometimes you noticed the girl across the aisle watching, the pharmacist watching, the checkout boy watching, and you saw yourself reflected in their stares: incongruous. Catching the eye like a hook. Every time you saw yourself from the outside, the way other people saw you, you remembered all over again. You saw it in the sign at the Peking Express—a cartoon man with a coolie hat, slant eyes, buckteeth, and chopsticks. You saw it in the little boys on the playground, stretching their eyes to slits with their fingers—Chinese—Japanese—look at these—and in the older boys who muttered ching chong ching chong ching as they passed you on the street, just loud enough for you to hear. You saw it when waitresses and policemen and bus drivers spoke slowly to you, in simple words, as if you might not understand. You saw it in photos, yours the only black head of hair in the scene, as if you’d been cut out and pasted in. 

You thought: Wait, what’s she doing there? And then you remembered that she was you.

Every day, since kindergarten, he saved her a seat—in the cafeteria, a chair across the table from him; on the bus, his books placed beside him on the green vinyl seat. If she arrived first, she saved a seat for him. Because of Nath, she never had to ride home alone while everyone else chatted sociably in pairs; she never needed to gulp out, “Can I sit here?” and risk being turned away. They never discussed it, but both came to understand it as a promise: he would always make sure there was a place for her. She would always be able to say, Someone is coming. I am not alone.

And Lydia herself—the reluctant center of their universe—every day, she held the world together. She absorbed her parents’ dreams, quieting the reluctance that bubbled up within. Years passed. Johnson and Nixon and Ford came and went. She grew willowy; Nath grew tall. Creases formed around their mother’s eyes; their father’s hair silvered at the temples. 

Lydia knew what they wanted so desperately, even when they didn’t ask.

 Every time, it seemed such a small thing to trade for their happiness. So she studied algebra in the summertime. She put on a dress and went to the freshman dance. She enrolled in biology at the college, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, all summer long. 

(What about Hannah? They set up her nursery in the bedroom in the attic, where things that were not wanted were kept, 

and even when she got older, now and then each of them would forget, fleetingly, that she existed

—as when Marilyn, laying four plates for dinner one night, did not realize her omission until Hannah reached the table. Hannah, as if she understood her place in the cosmos, grew from quiet infant to watchful child: a child fond of nooks and corners, who curled up in closets, behind sofas, under dangling tablecloths, staying out of sight as well as out of mind, to ensure the terrain of the family did not change.)

He did not mind this permanent state of eclipse: every evening, Lydia rapped at his door, silent and miserable. He understood everything she did not say, which at its core was: Don’t let go.

I didn’t expect to finish this book and nonetheless cry because of it. It had a very slow start yet I was still able to connect with the characters and some of their experiences.  plus…the family’s functional dysfunction made me feel frustrated, although it’s sadly realistic.

We have one person trying to fit in, the other trying to stand out, and just the outcome of both situations coming together in a tragic end. 

lily

I didn’t expect to finish this book and nonetheless cry because of it. It had a very slow start yet I was still able to connect with the characters and some of their experiences.  plus…the family’s functional dysfunction made me feel frustrated, although it’s sadly realistic.

We have one person trying to fit in, the other trying to stand out, and just the outcome of both situations coming together in a tragic end. 

There a slow burn and then there’s ‘Everything I Never Told You’. Whilst the novel made bold and interesting comments on the feeling of being othered and the Asian experience in 1970’s America, I found it difficult to cling on due to its slow burning nature and only found myself truly enjoying the final 70 pages. Additionally, James and Marilyn are abismal parents

Kath

I like the narration, but sometimes it is confusing, like you have to pick up what scene is currently being said. It also feels slow-paced, and the build-up is so long and many other unnecessary side stories. But overall, it's still good.

Andrea Morales

a very 3 ☆ read. the characters were interesting at times, but the mystery aspect of it wasn’t very well developed, and by the ending I felt like every important plot point or character development was very spoon-fed. like everything was perfectly resolved and was kind of oh so THAT’S what was missing silly us… idk kinda forgettable :/

armoni mayes

This is a very generous three stars. I think this may be my fault but this book seems to be YA? Online searches say it is general fiction but this book comes off as surface-level mystery/fiction which is why I think it should just be YA. This book discusses racism, grieving, and family dynamics but not in a super intellectual way, just brushing by topics here and there.

Bria

I was very surprised with this book. I’ve heard so many good things, so I thought this would be a pretty decent book. I found myself bored the entire time. I wouldn’t read this again nor recommend it to anyone.

11/28 Update

I’m bumping this up to 4 stars because I was in a slump when I reviewed. This is very well written, and I love the backstory. That was my favorite of the book. I wish there was a more build up, but I can understand that this is literary fiction and not really plot driven.

Is about a family that showcase very raw and unabashed perspectives from all sides. Is a very beautiful story of entangled emotions and aspirations.

Anna

Paula Plaza Ponte 

Celeste Ng, Wow. It was really difficult to put your book down. What you captured, through the pain of this family, written so beautifully, has left a dull ache in my heart and this tightness in my throat. It was only when I finished the book that I was able to breathe normally again. Talk about insecure based decisions left and right. I can relate to that need to escape at a very young age; the need to manage invisibility, loneliness, doting parents, mixed messages, others' projections, emotional blackmail and denial. And yes, the burden of expectations, attention and wishing to be anything but yourself. Amidst all the silence, the coping, the dysfunction, the discrimination and insecurity and misguided decisions however, one can't help but find love and hope in Ng's words. We can't choose our family and most of the time, everything we know about loving and forgiving and accepting starts there. And like everything without a manual, we almost always screw up. Like these guys. But, in the screwing up, in the getting lost, in the self absorption and self-loathing -- moments of clarity light up a room, even for just a second, it becomes painfully clear what we need to do to evolve ...and this is where we learn. We don't always get second chances and needing to live with that is another story. But when we do get that second chance -- redemption becomes possible. Hopefully, it slowly settles in. And until the next screw up, we can breathe.

like reading a tv show drama; a painful depiction of generational trauma

amelo

Caroline

Everything I never told you is my second read by author Celeste ng. At first I was very excited to read this book, but let me tell you as I moved forward in the book my excitement started to fade. Though a well written book, I just felt that there was a constant sadness that grip this book throughout, not even one happy moment , not even as the book moves in and out of flashbacks. 

The characters were quite over the top. The character of Marilyn and James, Lydia's mother and father were too full of their own selves and their want to fulfill their own dreams, which their failed to achieve and now which they try to live through their middle daughter while sidelining or ignoring their other two children was just so annoying, that there were times when I myself want to scream at them to "STOP IT". As for the character of Jack, I felt that the author herself did not know in which direction to go with him and finally ended up giving it a silly silly twist which to me quite did not fit in. 

I would have really loved, if the author had come up with a really gripping mystery or thriller or something more on how Lydia dead.

All I can say now that "LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE" will still remain at number one position for me by this author.

mimansa 

As an Indian, i always grew up with the thought that the family pressure of being perfect and the academic and social expectations did not exist in foreign countries. The children were much more free and happy. Obviously now i know its not true. 

Lydia is the middle child of the Lee family burdened with her parents expectations of becoming a successful doctor and popular high school student. While Lydia is quite opposite. Its sad to think that she decided to do whatever her mother said from such an early age that she didn’t even think about what she wanted.
Her older brother was her only support. He knew how she felt about her parents but was often conflicted with empathy towards her and jealously he felt due to the attention her parents gave her. Her younger sister was an observer. She never really stepped up and never got the attention she required from any member of the family and she was used to it.
The plot gets a little bit slow in the middle where we understand each family member i grave detail. But last 3 chapter coverup for that. It really puts in motion the family’s change and effort towards change and moving forward. How the other two children finally get the attention they deserve and how the parents learn and improve parenthood.

Maria

been meaning to read this for a while and i’m so glad i picked it up. the prose is perectly done and it gives the story so much vibrancy, despite the tragedy surrounding it. i think what i loved most about this was the family story and the complicated dynamics between all the family members, the clashing views between the wish to blend in vs the wish to stand out. it was all just superbly done. and from a narrative point of view, every character was treated with so much care, making them all so real and flawed. i did suspect a lot of the things that unfolded in this book, but even so it didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment. 
i really look forward to read  little fires everywhere !

I did not get the ending (non english native speaker things) all I did throughout reading is put myself in Lydia’s place and sob.

Megan Daigle

A thrilling, heart-wrenching, story filled with bits of like-truth of a delicate balance held by a dysfunctional family. Just as many families hold. An unfortunately true look into Asian racism and how it reaches for and touches so many unrealized places with its brutal, torturing fingers. Page turner worth every minute it takes to read.

This book was very slow paced. I get it’s a story about grief and the difficulties of being an interracial family in the Seventies and that part, for me, was decent.

What I didn’t like at all were the characters: everyone was extremely unlikeable, very one dimensional and I couldn’t really empathise with any of them. The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking that James and Marilyn should have never married and they especially should have never had children. 

Hannah and Nath are going to need so much therapy to try and heal the damage these two did to them. 

I also found that some of the relationships between the characters were basically the same as the ones in “Little Fires Everywhere”, so the whole thing was a bit repetitive, if you read both books. Different settings, different kinds of families, same dynamics. 

Overall I didn’t really enjoy this read. At times I didn’t even want to pick it up and a few times I thought about not finishing it.

Roberta

This book was very slow paced. I get it’s a story about grief and the difficulties of being an interracial family in the Seventies and that part, for me, was decent.

What I didn’t like at all were the characters: everyone was extremely unlikeable, very one dimensional and I couldn’t really empathise with any of them. The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking that James and Marilyn should have never married and they especially should have never had children. 

Hannah and Nath are going to need so much therapy to try and heal the damage these two did to them. 

I also found that some of the relationships between the characters were basically the same as the ones in “Little Fires Everywhere”, so the whole thing was a bit repetitive, if you read both books. Different settings, different kinds of families, same dynamics. 

Overall I didn’t really enjoy this read. At times I didn’t even want to pick it up and a few times I thought about not finishing it.

'There is much here that might impress Pulitzer and Man Booker judges...Ng brilliantly depicts the destruction that parents can inflict on their children and on each other' Mark Lawson, Guardian Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened. And if you loved Everything I Never Told You, don't miss Celeste Ng's second novel Little Fires Eveywhere What readers are saying: 'Devastating...A truly tragic but devastatingly well written book' 'Ng is a true craftsman. I implore you to read this. Also my favourite ending of a novel so far this year' 'This is the best book I have read this year' 'Really enjoyed this book, deeply moving, sad and thought provoking'

Amazon.com's #1 Book of the Year 2014

Zahra

4.5 stars

This book shattered my heart into tiny little pieces. But also mended it whole again with that beautiful and hopeful ending, wrapping things up nicely. Such a powerful book about family, sibling relationship, being different, and accepting who you truly are.

The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere. “A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense." -O, the Oprah Magazine "Explosive...Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family." -Entertainment Weekly “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

A Novel

Suyash Goylit

I guess the journey is as, if not more, important than the destination

Everything I Never Told You is like a recovering addict. It has potential but every time it starts to go remotely in the direction of something resembling excellence, it takes a nosedive into self-destruction. There is a hint of a good story shrouded by a massive curtain of racism and sexism. Sure these are very sensitive issues and could draw enormous emotions when handled well, but that isn't the case here. What should've been the cogs in character building or the driving force behind the characters, at most, takes center stage in the story, and the characters become second fiddle. There were times when I wanted to learn about the characters but all I could see were these victims of racism and sexism. Not to take lightly, of course, but it became tedious after a while.
 
Another problem with the novel is the pacing. It is pretty clear that in the big picture it is a slow-paced piece of work, but that memo gets lost somewhere en-route to the lower level. There is no chapter-based perspective approach that would have helped the slow-burning style tremendously, rather the perspective keeps switching not just during a single chapter, but even in a section and worst of all, even during the course of a single paragraph. The writing style was far too start-stop to generate any sort of flow. Whenever I was about to get absorbed by a scene, it would just vanish abruptly, and it got a little irritating after a while.
 
Now, all of this could have been ignored in favor of good characters but the novel fails in this regard as well. James and Marilyn have to be some of the worst parents ever. I get why they did what they did, but since the end goal of the story was to make me feel sympathetic for them, there should have been at least one redeeming quality to them. Instead, throughout the story, the author kept on dumping on them, to the point I grew to hate them and the redemption never came. Nath's character was too shallow and underdeveloped. The only ones that I felt relatable were Hannah and Jack and none of them were given any attention.
 
(view spoiler)[The only reason I kept reading this was to find out the circumstances behind Lydia's death and that turned out to be the most disappointing of the bunch. I get that her death was supposed to be poetic, some sort of metaphor of darkness, but to me, the whole thing just fizzled out poorly. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, I understand what the author had in mind and the idea wasn't bad at all, but the mediocre execution just sank the whole thing.

Ned Summers 

Really impressed by this book. Read it in three days because I couldn't put it down but even reading it so quickly I now have that post-story empty feeling that comes from feeling so attached to the characters. Really quite beautiful, and quite heart-wrenching too.

Ryan 

i think this is one of the most beautifully crafted story i’ve ever read. i felt everyone’s own pain and heartbreak in this book like more hands grasps at my throat and choking the life out of me. probably one of the best books i read this year by far. more to come.

Gracie Marsden

Julia Lundberg 

azliana aziz

oh well with the glowing review I've read I thought I would love the book but honestly I am not. I feel that James and Marilyn are too selfish with their own ambitions and victimized their own children. Everyone is so self centered and caught up in their own world. I get that the time setting of the story was in 70's but that doesnt mean they could not be hold guilty. I only care for Hannah actually and sometimes Nath. As for Lydia, well I get that she feels burdened by her parents attention but as Nath said, better with over attention than no one pays attention to you at all.

Cody Degen

3.5 stars

They almost say the title in the book but it wasnt verbatim so it doesnt count

Wow. This book is one of those books that you can't stop reading with it's gripping story. Once you started it, you won't stop.

The story was pretty simple but it's the way it's written and narrated that you will get hooked. What I love about this story are the characters. Every single character has a rich background and stories to tell. They deserve each their own stories. There's a story between the story that's what I love about the writing.

I think I would be looking forward for the other works of this author.

Everything I Never Told You

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