Title: Everything I Never Told YouAuthor: Celeste Ng
Published by: Penguin Books on May 12, 2015
Genres: General Fiction
Pages: 297
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
Book Rating: 7/10
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.
Review:
When I first picked up this book I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I thought it was going to be a suspenseful novel. And although there is a mystery, Lydia’s death, I feel the main plot evolved more around family dynamics and the different relationships between each member of the family than the mystery itself.
Saying that the writing is very poetic. The characters are developed nicely. And the story is very emotional and thought-provoking.
I think if you’re looking for a good contemporary drama you will really enjoy this book. However, if you pick it up hoping for a page-turning mystery you might be a little disappointed.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from the following Amazon links.
About Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng is the author of the novel Everything I Never Told You, which was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the ALA’s Alex Award, and the Medici Book Club Prize, and was a finalist for numerous awards, including the Ohioana Award, the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.
Celeste grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a family of scientists. Celeste attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and she is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize.
Currently, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, will be published by Penguin Press in fall 2017.