Everything I Never Told You
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By Celeste Ng
avg rating
3 reviews
Amazon.com’s no. 1 Book of the Year 2014 Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue – in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting. When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest in the family – Hannah – who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.
Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.
Reviews
This is a fiction book, I picked it up after watching the series Little Fires Everywhere based on another of Celeste Ng's books.
It is look at the challenges faced by a multicultural couple living and raising children in a predominantly white, homogeneous part of America.
I give it 3.5 stars. It's a tragic, slow moving story about an American-Chinese family in the 1970's but with long flashbacks to the 1960's. It tells of what it is to be different and trying to fit and it tells of the damage family members can do to one another through misunderstandings and secrets. Not a book to read if you need something uplifting and hopeful.
Unfortunately only a very few people turned up for this book club meeting so the discussion was a little shorter than usual.
We discussed the issue that we might be missing certain elements of the book because we're all white, maybe we would have got more from it if we were of the same ethnic group as the author? Also, we're all a lot older than the protagonists so again we might be missing some elements of the story.
We felt really sorry for all the children in the book and their family situation. Lydia had so much pressure put on her by her mother whereas the two other siblings (Nathan and Hannah) were really just ignored as the parents put so much of their effort into the one child they felt was going to achieve the most.
It was so sad that everyone in the book was keeping a secret and if they had just spoken to each other about these things maybe some of the tragedy would not have happened. Everything just spiralled completely out of control so quickly and easily when they just didn't talk to each other.
Overall we gave this book 6 out of 10.
