Everything I've Never Told You
Celeste Ng
Penguin
I’ve discovered a new author to love, something that always makes me smile.
Her name is Celeste Ng and I’ve just power-read her two novels over Christmas.
The first, published in 2014, is Everything I’ve Never Told You. It’s about a mixed-race family – the father is Chinese, the mother is white – whose teenage daughter goes missing.
The second is Little Fires Everywhere, which is about the upper middle class Richardson family living in the utopian suburban American community of Shaker Heights. A single mother and her teenage daughter move to town, serving as the catalyst for all kinds of shenanigans in the life of the four Richardson teenagers. A sub-plot deals with a wealthy white family who is trying to adopt an Asian baby who was abandoned by her mother, but who now wants her back.
Both novels are excellent. They are pitch perfect stories about today’s American families – the secrets they keep, the tensions they feel and the pressures that abound.
Ng is a talented writer, with on-the-mark pace, taut suspense, unforgettable characters and realistic situations that will get under readers’ skins.
She is adept a keeping the present-day story going, while filling the reader in on the back stories which are full of historical and modern contexts ripped from the headlines.
Ng grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a planned community, so she’s familiar with her setting. She graduated from Harvard University and studied writing at the University of Michigan. Both books have been lauded as best books of the year by many publications and have received other awards, all well deserved.
I’m looking forward to Ng’s next novel, and expect readers will be too.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com
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