I have been aware of Celeste Ng for some time. I really wanted to read her current book, "Little Fires Everywhere," and I am sure I will get to it at some point, possibly this year, but I wanted to read her debut novel, before I took on the other.
"Everything I Never Told You" has the potential of being a mystery. One reviewer compared it to "The Lovely Bones," but don't be fooled; it is not like that at all. From the first sentence, it is revealed Lydia, the oldest daughter in the Lee family, is dead, and it took me about a third of the way through to figure out that she had committed suicide.
This is not spoiling the story for everyone, for, as the title clues the reader in, it refers not only to what Lydia kept to herself, but the other Lee family members, as well. Rather than a police investigatory, the reader gets a psychological examination into a family, suggesting why Lydia came to do what she did.
I have to confess. I often regretted my parents did push me more. But, then, they really did not have to. Poor Lydia is being pushed in all sorts of ways impossible for any child to live up to.
Her parents, Marilyn and James Lee, are what was once called--and maybe still is--a mixed marriage. Marilyn is American, James is Chinese. Both, through no real fault of their own, bring their own issues to bear on Lydia, who is clearly "the favored one." Marilyn, who wanted to go to medical school, but gave that up for marriage, projects her science ambitions onto Lydia, who is bright enough, but is pushed to the brink of failure by her mother. James, who always felt himself an outsider, pushes for Lydia to have more friends, be popular, be one of the alpha kids everyone, he included, wanted to be when in high school. I get it. What they don't get is that Lydia has reached a point where she does not know who she is, what she wants, just that she does not want all this. And, like many teens in such situations, she takes the only option she sees as available.
This is a cautionary tale about parents pushing their children to far in directions belonging to them, not the offspring. They are an Asian family in Ohio, during the Seventies, so the issue of truly standing out and being different is explored, and is also contributory to Lydia's decision.
I did not hate the Lees. I felt enormous sympathy for them. If they had just managed to look past their own issues, they might have recognized Lydia's, and this horrible tragedy would have been prevented.
In the end, the book actually tells the reader everything needed to know why what happened did. And the consequences of pushing a child too far.
You will definitely need to take a break, after this one, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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