Reviews
typical asian parents story đ
I didnât 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. plusâŚthe familyâs functional dysfunction made me feel frustrated, although itâs 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 thereâs âEverything I Never Told Youâ. Whilst the novel made bold and interesting comments on the feeling of being othered and the Asian experience in 1970âs 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
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.
a very 3 â read. the characters were interesting at times, but the mystery aspect of it wasnât 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 THATâS what was missing silly us⌠idk kinda forgettable :/
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.
I was very surprised with this book. Iâve heard so many good things, so I thought this would be a pretty decent book. I found myself bored the entire time. I wouldnât read this again nor recommend it to anyone. 11/28 Update Iâm 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.
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
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.
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 didnât 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 familyâs 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.
been meaning to read this for a while and iâm 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 didnât 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 Lydiaâs place and sob.
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 itâs a story about grief and the difficulties of being an interracial family in the Seventies and that part, for me, was decent.
What I didnât like at all were the characters: everyone was extremely unlikeable, very one dimensional and I couldnât really empathise with any of them. The whole time I couldnât 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 âLittle Fires Everywhereâ, so the whole thing was a bit repetitive, if you read both books. Different settings, different kinds of families, same dynamics.
Overall I didnât really enjoy this read. At times I didnât even want to pick it up and a few times I thought about not finishing it.
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.
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.
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.
i think this is one of the most beautifully crafted story iâve ever read. i felt everyoneâs 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.
Beautiful!
jack [brustet hjärta]
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.
3.5 stars They almost say the title in the book but it wasnt verbatim so it doesnt count
Highlights
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."
BRO WHAT
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.
WTF
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 Marilynâs lifeline and love line crossed
They didnât understand his answers, but theyâd nodded, pleased that James was learning things they did not know.
He can guess, but he wonât ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything sheâd never told him. Whether she thought heâd failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.
There is nowhere to go but on. Still, part of her longs to go back for one instantânot 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.
Ever since that summer, she had been so afraidâof 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 parentsâ dreams. How suffocating to be so loved.
Before that she hadnât 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 thatâlike snowâdrifted and settled and crushed you with their weight. All the words were right, but in this new Nathâs voice, they sounded trivial and brittle and hollow. The way anyone else might have heard them. Already her brother had become a stranger.
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, heâd convinced the librarian to let him borrow from the adultsâ section and brought home textbooks on physics, flight mechanics, aerodynamics. How heâd asked for a telescope for his fourteenth birthday and received a clock radio instead; how heâd 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 didnât care and went on anyway. It was too familiar to be surprising.
People decide what youâre like before they even get to know you. They think they know all about you. Except youâre never who they think you are.
Sometimes you almost forgot: that you didnât 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 didnât 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 Expressâa 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 fingersâChineseâJapaneseâlook at theseâand 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 youâd been cut out and pasted in. You thought: Wait, whatâs she doing there? And then you remembered that she was you.
Every day, since kindergarten, he saved her a seatâin 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, âCan I sit here?â 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.
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: Donât let go.