Celeste Ng

"Traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives"--

Little Fires Everywhere

In the placid, progressive suburb of Shaker Heights everything is meticulously planned, from the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson. Mia Warren, an enigmatic artist and single mother, arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants : all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When the Richardsons' friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs Richardson on opposing sides. Mrs Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family - and Mia's.

Shahab Valizadeh

In her experience, when someone tried to do something for her, it came from either pity or distrust, but this simple gesture felt like what it was: a small kindness, with no strings attached.

"Being allowed to do something and knowing how to do it are not the same thing."

“Lexie’s got a good brain. She just doesn’t always use it in real life.”

They were so artlessly beautiful, even right out of bed.

and to his delight he found in Pearl another poetic soul.

So it would feel to him that he had always known her name, that somehow, he and Pearl had known each other always.

“A community is known by the schools it keeps.”

—she appreciated his thoughtfulness anyway. Mr. Yang was exactly the kind of tenant Mrs. Richardson wanted: a kind person to whom she could do a kind turn, and who would appreciate her kindness.

and she rented only to people she felt were deserving but who had, for one reason or another, not quite gotten a fair shot in life. 

Anna

Remember, Mia had said: Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way. 

betty books

This was an easy, enjoyable read, though I wish the descriptive writing had been a little stronger. The story dives deep into small-town family dynamics in a way that feels real and relatable. The ending was a wild ride, frustrating at first, but it left me questioning everything and wanting more.

Brandi

What is fair, what is right, and what consequences synthesize within childrens’ lives due to their parents’ decisions?

Jessica Pham

I ate this up. It left me with a hundred questions that I wanted to dissect with someone. It wonderfully hit on themes of inequality - by race, age, income, and gender. Ng is able to depict each of those struggles independently and in connection with eachother. Everyone has a little villain in them in this book and I love that. 

Kalista Dickson

Long. Heartwrentching in every way. Too real

Naomi Kemph

Emma Randall

i was expecting little more from this book, i wanted to see the whole family realizing what happened instead of just izzy, but i feel bad for the kids, its seems neither of them are happy where they are and it doesn’t seems like the book ends any better than how it started, watching few episodes of the show now, also not used to this writing style

debbie <3

The entrancing qualities of this book as it eloquently explores ideas of motherhood and what it means to be a parent were honestly addictive.

Camille Osborn-Clark

Little fires everywhere [sound recording]

I needed more and not in a good way👎🏾

🥔

This is one of my favorite books. I have decided. It is not only about one thing but shows life for every single character and I love it. I just love it. I definitely have to read it again sometime in the future.

Ryan Mateyk

POPSUGAR 2020: A book by a WOC 

This book falls nicely into my favourite genre of desperate housewives.

Bria

Includes a conversation with author, discussion questions, and a "letter" from author.

Ditipriya Acharya

I had been meaning to read this book ever since the TV series was announced, mostly because I’m one of those snobs who needs to read the book first. However, even though I started reading it multiple times I could never go beyond the first 2 chapters. This was not due to the writing, I actually quite enjoyed Ng’s style and so I may give her first book a try sometime this year, but somehow I didn’t quite gel with the flow of the story itself. 

In 2021 I have decided to give the books that I started and didn’t finish another go and the first book that I picked up as part of this project was this one. I pushed through the first 2 chapters and after that it was quite a pleasant read, if not slightly mediocre. The book is often described as a literary thriller and is told in multiple timelines. I ended up enjoying some timelines more than others, particularly the section that described Mia’s past. The main plot, concerning the Richardson and Wright teens, however fell a little flat. I was not invested in it and some of the actions of the younger characters annoyed me. I also would have liked for the book to have a better resolution. While I generally enjoy books with ambiguous endings this one felt a little incomplete to me. 

Having said that, I did enjoy the McCullough / Chow storyline and the topics that it explored like motherhood, cultural identity and the question of whether parents can possibly raise adoptive children of a different race in a manner that is respectful to their birth culture. The detail in which this part of the story was told reflected what I think are Ng’s own experiences as someone with immigrant parents in America. 

While there were things about the book that I liked, I have a feeling in the long run there’s going to be little about the book that will stick with me. Overall, I thought this was a pleasant read but not a particularly memorable one.

I enjoyed this one for the most part. I wished it was a little more fast-paced, but, overall I enjoyed the characters and the way the story unfolded. I found mrs richardson to be a deeply unlikable busybody but her children made up for it. I also wasn’t crazy about the ending because I feel like we had a lot left unanswered. do may ling and bebe have a happy life? or are they going to always be on the run from the past much like mia and pearl? what happens to izzy? does she find mia and pearl? does she go back to the richardsons? does mrs richardson finally treat her better? do mia and pearl ever get to actually settle down somewhere and stay there? how does mia’s reunion with her parents go? does pearl like her grandparents? do they like pearl? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS. 

anyway. the story was good. I was just left wanting more.

emily learmont

I enjoyed this one for the most part. I wished it was a little more fast-paced, but, overall I enjoyed the characters and the way the story unfolded. I found mrs richardson to be a deeply unlikable busybody but her children made up for it. I also wasn’t crazy about the ending because I feel like we had a lot left unanswered. do may ling and bebe have a happy life? or are they going to always be on the run from the past much like mia and pearl? what happens to izzy? does she find mia and pearl? does she go back to the richardsons? does mrs richardson finally treat her better? do mia and pearl ever get to actually settle down somewhere and stay there? how does mia’s reunion with her parents go? does pearl like her grandparents? do they like pearl? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS. 

anyway. the story was good. I was just left wanting more.

Chloé

Haikal Satria

Was nothing like I expected, even though I expected nothing. Would read again.

Sarah Sammis

The book opens with one of these idyllic houses burning to the ground, set fire by one of its residents. The remainder of the book is the unwinding of events to point to what could drive a suburban family to such extremes.

The event that changed everything, that set the dominoes to fall, was the arrival of Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl. They are renting one of the upstairs apartments in the homes that are duplexes made to look like one. Mia is an artist.

336633 - family home Blue Highway

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2020/comm...

Lindy

Little Fires Everywhere has a lot in common with Peyton Place: Women writers exposing the hidden hypocrisies of the communities in which they were raised! Discussion of social inequalities! Hopping between points of view! Vignettes of peripheral characters! Children of mysterious parentage! House fires! Newspaper reporters! Characters that rarely deviate from stock archetypes of contemporary fiction! Plotlines that teeter over the edge into melodrama! (view spoiler)[Teenagers dying in car wrecks! Abortion! (hide spoiler)]

Little Fires Everywhere does differ from Peyton Place in two significant respects, though. First, the writing in Peyton Place is uneven and frequently clunky, while Celeste Ng's prose is intensely competent and polished like most of the bestsellers that have been billed as great for bookclubs over the last ten years. Second, while Peyton Place was truly incendiary in its time, Little Fires Everywhere remains disappointingly pedestrian; very little in it challenged me. (view spoiler)[I actually find it kind of concerning that Mia, who is positioned as the moral center of the story to the point she's compared to the Virgin Mary, says that an abortion is a sad event that's going to follow Lexie through the rest of her life after years earlier experiencing a desire out of nowhere to be a mother due to... getting screamed at by her parents? feeling the necessity of family after the death of her brother? the miracle of pregnancy? The book is more conservative than it thinks, and the turning point needed more elaboration. What if, upon realizing that surrogacy is unethical, Mia had elected to terminate the pregnancy? What if Bebe had indeed had an abortion during the course of the court case? (hide spoiler)]

For what it's worth, my mother, who grew up the daughter of a poor single mother in a different planned community, loved this book. The bottom line for me that Little Fires Everywhere is far from being bad, but it is generic.

Hannah Yoon

I haven't really read a contemporary fiction in a while so I was a bit hesitant about starting this and wasn't sure if I'd finish.
But soon after I got started I wanted to finish this book in a few days but I didn't realize it would be in less than a day.
Ng did a beautiful job of weaving character development with the past and the present.
It was a bit hard to get into with the first two chapters, but soon after when Mia and Pearl were introduced and Ng went into their back story, I was hooked.

A Novel

** spoiler alert **
           don’t be mistaken, i enjoyed it. however the plot loses track and it gets into dramatic/unbelievable territory. it was, however, very interesting anyways. 

i’ll be thinking about bebe and her baby, hopefully living well and happy. and the wonderful family of mia, pearl and izzy.

Witty, sharp, and a quick read. I loved the style of writing, and the tangled stories drew you in.

Kendall Lobdell

Amelia Baumann

anticlimactic, plot was very boring, super predictable

JoAnna

Little Fires Everywhere reads like a movie, but better. Celeste does omniscient narration so well. Sometimes the sheer density of the writing slowed it down, but her hooks, and the way she closed out each scene, each chapter, made it worth the read. 

The ending of the novel absolutely delivered. Sometimes novels build really well before dropping the ball near the climax/denouement, but the novel maintained tension throughout. And I loved how Celeste's identity infiltrates her own story, the way she snakes three separate Cantonese characters into a tale about her Ohio suburb.

Little Fires Everywhere

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