The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere. “A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense.” —O, the Oprah Magazine“Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family.” —Entertainment Weekly“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 … 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.
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I was reading this book as part of a city “Reads” program, so it isn’t a book I would normally pick up, but it was a very engrossing. The characters are very real and very tragic. It is frustrating to read, because the characters have done everything the opposite way than the way they should have done, yet the way things go in life, where people are so afraid to really “communicate” with one another, I suppose it is pretty realistic. The book is very sad and looks at themes that are very contemporary. All-in-all a good read, but I wouldn’t say an enjoyable one… there is no happy in this book.
Gorgeous writing and a story that stays with you
Read This For my Book club. At First It Got A Bit Confusing, But After A While You Can Really Get Into It. Shows How A Family Can Go Thru A Tradgdy And What Can Make Or Break Them
A book about children and how they view the expectations parents unwittingly the place upon them. A heartbreaking read about loss and choices and discovery. An excellent read, especially for parents.
I love the way this author writes. It’s beautiful and devastating at the same time. It starts out pretty slow, setting up what’s to come, but picks up and keeps you engaged. Digging into Lydia’s personality, and who she really is when isn’t hiding her true self, is hard to read.
It makes you wonder how well we know our loved ones and what they struggle with inside. It also makes me want to grab my children and grandchildren and hug them tight and keep them close.
Sometimes a smile, a hug, even a kind word can completely change someone’s day. We don’t know what people are struggling with…be kind.
This book has one of the best hooks! I was listening to it on audio, so I was caught off guard and had to start over to make sure I heard it correctly. The book is great because it starts and then tells you the ending of the book at the beginning, then proceeds to explain how we came to this point. I feel like this is one of those families that I just want to shake each of the members and point out that what they are doing is hurting the others. I cringe because I relate to the parents in their own way, and I relate to the children as well. So much delicious dysfunction.
This book, just like “Little Fires Everywhere” provokes thought. It makes you examine what you think you know. I usually read mysteries and thrillers, but Celeste is a nice break from that. I would recommend this book to readers of any genre.
Not believable.
Again don’t remember but know I enjoyed
Insightful
I should have read this book sooner. That’s the thought that hit me just a few pages in, as I began reading, and was sucked into the world of this highly functional dysfunctional family and it’s the thought that lingers even now when I’ve closed the page at the end. I should have read this sooner instead of letting it languish on my tbr list for literal years. I think, maybe though, perhaps I simply read it at the time when I needed it most. I’m rambling. Ignore my deep thoughts on the themes of this book and how they relate to my current life. At its core, this is a book about family, about the lies we tell ourselves and the truths that are often so hard to see. It is not, as some have said, a murder mystery or a psychological thriller. It didn’t need to be to keep me hanging in the edge of my seat. Every single line of this book is special and poignant and put together just so in order to create a book that is powerful in its simplicity and scale. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year and I think it will be a reread again and again, so that I can catch nuances I didn’t this first time around. This book is deeper than the lake that plays such a pivotal role, and full of just as many mysteries.
This is Celeste Ng’s first novel and it is straight up contemporary modernism with a twist. She writes about a classic nuclear family that loses one of its three children, a high school aged daughter named Lydia who has a Chinese father and a White mother. A mystery that lingers after Lydia’s drowning death from apparent suicide is whether her racial situation — trying to fit in as the only non-white girl at her school — was a contributing factor. This question haunts her parents. The mother — Marilyn — was told by her own mother that she was making a mistake marrying James, the Chinese father, that it was simply wrong and no good could result — then she cut herself off from her daughter. When two of her kids — Nathaniel and Lydia — were still small, Marilyn suddenly ran away from her family and enrolled in pre-med courses and tried to start her life over again and become a doctor like she’d originally planned. But before she’d been gone long, she figured out she was pregnant with a third child and quit on her dreams again and came home. Unfortunately, the trauma caused to her family by her sudden flight was greater than she could have imagined. Neither of her kids were really ever the same. Nathaniel or Nath became an angry achiever with a single-minded goal of winning a full-ride scholarship to Harvard and never looking back. Lydia became a pleaser, willing to do anything to keep her mom from running again. In the process, she loses complete track of who she is and tries to become a doctor and even convinces herself she wants it. Ng’s point of view is surprisingly distant and mobile for a recent novel, which could be explained by its taking place in the 70s. Nowadays, third-person novels are typically tied to one or a few characters and the sense of intimacy between reader and hero is extreme. Here, Ng herself is actually present here and there and observing her people at a slight remove. Lydia’s death questions our notions of freedom, which is un-American to do out loud. The heroes ponder whether it’s really a free country and if anybody who has a family is really free. How free are we to drop everything and go be our most authentic selves? The plotlines here are unpredictable and often zig when we think they’ll zag, which allows for a twist at the end, another device not often seen nowadays.
Kept me wanting more…!
If you pick up EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU be prepared for a book that is both compelling and deeply disturbing. At the start of the book a 16 year old girl is dead. The rest of the book is about figuring out what happened to her. But this isn’t a simple crime drama. Instead, it’s the story of a family and the ways in which its members believe they know each other intimately but in reality, nothing could be farther from the truth. All members of even the best families keep secrets. And those secrets can impact everyone.
As you read you will slowly uncover the true family dynamics from each person’s distinctive perspective –both parents and their three children. James, a professor at a small liberal arts college, struggles with his Asian heritage. His wife Lydia mourns the path she DIDN’T take. Nath, their oldest and finishing up his senior year of high school, is eager to head to an ivy league college. Lydia, the favorite, has aspirations of becoming a doctor, but has recently begun hanging out with the neighborhood “bad boy.” And Hannah, the youngest, turns out to be the most astute observer of them all.
As their family history unfolds, the reader finds out how different members of the family have been shaped differently by the same events. And because the history is so completely plausible, ordinary even, it’s unsettling to see how BOTH parents AND siblings unknowingly make profound mistakes in dealing with each other that then impact the fate of them all. Ng has done an excellent job of making each of these five characters unique and believable.
Great story.
Have a box of Kleenex handy
A timely issue. Follow the different family members through the issues of racism as well as dealing with the death of a family member.
I had to listen to this one in a single day. The eldest biracial daughter of an Asian American college professor, (and his blonde, blue eyed former student, now wife), is missing from her bed one morning. What follows is a comprehensive , yet gentle retelling of the events leading to the disappearance and the aftermath. I loved seeing the events from each of the three children, mom,dad, and neighbor. Tricky family relationships with volatile emotions seems to be the main theme, along with intentional and unintentional racism. I enjoyed this novel very much.
Cassandra Campbell is an excellent narrator for the audio version.
Couldn’t put it down. Surprising plot and good characterization.
I didn’t love it…kept reading but at the end rather wished I hadn’t. I think it was because I didn’t like the mum. The events kind of take place very slowly.