In October I got a fanta-bulous book haul from a local annual jumble sale, including Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. In jumble sale situations there's not much you can do except judge a book by its cover unless you spot one you have wanted to read for a while. In the case of Everything I Never Told You, I read the blurb, thought it sounded a bit like Riverdale (dead body of teenager found in lake in small American town, whodunit vibes) and would therefore be a decent read. Besides, you can't go wrong at 3 for £1.
What I thought would be a semi-good book completely surpassed my expectations. Not only was it a fantastic story, well thought out and well written, it was also complex in its handling of various themes. Also, it avoided the over-dramatic, thriller/ whodunit angle in favour of a much more sophisticated yet simple explanation.
Everything I Never Told You is about an underrepresented mixed race family (Chinese American) in an underrepresented setting - small town America in the 60s and 70s. I'm saying underrepresented because I personally have never encountered this genre of identity story, which either says a lot about my own limited reading perimeters, the school/ university curriculum, or both.
Ng deals with issues of family dynamics, identity, racism, failure and discontentment. It would be a book I'd be able to get my teeth into analytically if I studied it at uni. The book opens with 16 year old Lydia's body being found in a lake and the story takes you through flashbacks from all the family member's perspectives of how they reached that point. From the mum and dad getting together to the youngest child being born, the family dynamics and their place within their wider community is slowly unravelled in order to reveal what happened to Lydia.
Being honest, and this is totally showing my ignorance here, I hadn't realised the extend of the racism and identity crisis a Chinese American family would have faced in this era. Considering my cultural reference points are Netflix series and movies of 2018/2019 where cast members of south-east Asian descent are beautiful, popular, confident etc and stars like Lana Condor and Henry Golding are totally rocking it right now, it's something I've never thought a great deal about. Ng explores the subtle and often brutal and blatant racism the family face and their exclusion from the wider community and each other. She totally flipped my perspective on its head and paints a portrait of toxic family life and individual isolation which I'm sure many people can identify in some way with.
Another interesting aspect of the book was the projection of parents' anxieties and failed dreams onto their children and the pressure and misery than ensues. There's also subplot of unrequited homosexual love which, while it seems random and somewhat underdeveloped, is crucial to the mystery's resolution.
Overall
- Completely addictive, excellent story and totally gripping from start to finish.
- The characters are very three dimensional and you end up feeling for each one of them because of their own internal frustrations which, if they'd only express, could be resolved. Very much like watching an episode of Eastenders when you're shouting at the screen for people to just communicate with each other and say what's wrong.
- I'd rate it 4/5
If you like 'Everything I Never Told You' you will also like:
- The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi - funny, stark and deals with similar issues of mixed identity in a dysfunctional family in London in the 1970s.
- Never Greener by Ruth Jones - addictive and warm, if you like a good story this is one for you. Well written and immediately hooks you in. Plays out the 'what ifs' of two couples' lives to explore the well known proverb 'the grass is always greener'.
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