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No title (2014)

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6,3363701,507 (3.88)222
"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, 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 center of every party. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest of the family-Hannah-who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another"--… (more)
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Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (2014)

  1. 42
    The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (cat.crocodile)
  2. 20
    Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout (BookshelfMonstrosity)
  3. 00
    Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult (linnzsue)
  4. 00
    Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg (novelcommentary)
    novelcommentary: Both begin with a death which is then explored through various viewpoints
  5. 00
    Midnight at the Dragon Café by Judy Fong Bates (JenMDB)
  6. 01
    My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (linnzsue)
  7. 01
    Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (sylvarum)
    sylvarum: The books are by the same author, are both set in suburban areas of America, and touch on similar themes of belonging, adolescence, cross-cultural conflict and familial tension.
  8. 03
    Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (carriehh)
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» See also 222 mentions

English (364)  Dutch (1)  Piratical (1)  All languages (366)
Showing 1-5 of 364 (next | show all)
Everything I Never Told You is the slowest-moving roller coaster I've ever been on, and I mean that in a good way.

As a victim of narcissistic parenting myself, I deeply appreciated how Ng portrays the complicated relationships in the Lee family. Each character is richly unique with a comprehensive history backing up why they are the way that they are. The characterization of Lydia in particular is so perfect - though we are privy to her thoughts and feelings, we never really get to know her, because she understandably lacks individuality.

However, based on my admittedly unprofessional understanding of personal development and social dynamics, I find that the birth order of the Lee kids doesn't quite make sense. Hannah, the youngest Lee, is so much more of a middle child. Middle children often receive less attention than their bookend siblings. As a result, they take on the role of peacemakers/middlemen within the family. This describes Hannah to a T. Lydia could be a youngest child, which makes sense to me, too, seeing as she does already get most of her parent's devotion and attention.

Moving on to my thoughts on the ending:


The ending really bothered me for three big reasons:
1) THE PACING: This book overall unravels in a lovely, slow, meditative way that allows you to appreciate each of the family's feelings and faults in turn. After all that slowness, the ending felt rushed. In just 10 pages, multiple deeply-broken characters abruptly come to terms with their sins and decide to officially change. These realizations are all largely unjustified. If the author was worried about dragging out the novel with a long denouement, she could have shortened the first three quarters and achieved, I think, a reasonable balance. Some of the scenes, like James's gift of the necklace to Lydia, felt like too much frosting on the cake and could have easily been omitted. Essentially, the ending of Everything I Never Told You undoes a lot of Ng's groundwork, which is a shame.

2) LYDIA: I hated the official, final reason given for her death; it makes the rest of the plot, as well as her character, pointless. Wasn't the whole narrative point of Lydia's suicide that it forced her family to consider what had gone wrong (not in a Hannah Baker way)? It made sense to me that Lydia would commit suicide because she gave up. Instead, we get this weird thing where she decides to change but dies in the process. Narratively, we don't need her to have found hope - the novel's focus was so clearly on those left behind and how they would search for hope in the wake of death. I don't think we even needed to know why exactly she chose to jump into the lake - the exposé on her family was interesting enough, and it would be fitting for the reader to never know any more about Lydia's final moments than any one else. And her deciding to try to swim to shore was so... stupid. No matter how emotional or exhilarated she was, it was still stupid and infuriating and took me out of the story. Such a dumb way to deal with a critical moment.

3) NATH AND JACK: Finally, I want to complain about specifically THAT ONE LINE at the very end when the author suggests Nath will eventually come to return Jack's feelings. I find this to be unfair to both Jack and Nath. On the one hand, we have Jack. It's pretty pathetic for Jack to be in love with the same guy for his entire childhood, but I didn't find that too unbelievable. But if we're to believe what the author's implying, then it seems Jack will continue to wait for Nath into adulthood. Every other character gets a major revelation at some point - where is Jack's? When does Jack get to realize his crush is futile, and he'd be better off moving on? Please, just let the poor boy grow up and find someone who loves him from the start! Jack doesn't deserve this, nor does Nath. If Nath is attracted to men, it potentially undermines his arc throughout the book. What I mean is, if Nath is gay/bi, it becomes easy to blame all Nath's aggression on his rejection of his own sexuality. Like the only reason he hated Jack was because he had feelings for Jack. Obviously that's not true - Nathan had an awful childhood, and it makes sense for him to be an angry guy. I'd be fine with him being LGBT (God knows there should be more representation), but his eventual romance with Jack serves no positive narrative purpose.
( )
  boopingaround | Mar 6, 2024 |
Parents should not impress their own unworked-through issues onto their children; it can make the children suffer.
Lydia knew what they wanted so desperately, even when they didn't ask. Every time, it seemed such a small thing to trade for their happiness. So she studied algebra in the summertime. She put on a dress and went to the freshman dance. She enrolled in biology at the college, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, all summer long. Yes. Yes. Yes.
So every time her mother said Do you want ---? she had said yes. She knew what her parents had longed for, without them saying a word, and she had wanted them happy. Read this book. Yes. Want this. Love this. Yes.
( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
Beautifully captures the immigrant experience through a slow-burn family drama.

What's good:
- How Celeste Ng's articulates the loneliness and dull ache(??) that comes with being a visible minority is spot on. I've experienced this time and time and time again throughout my life. But witnessing the same thing through the eyes of another character and have that pain be internalized and then passed on to the next generation just made me choke up.
- The literary usage of Lydia's death as a starting point to explain how each parents' own struggles evolved to expectations that eventually kill her and tear the family apart was brilliantly executed. Each time I think of this story, I uncover a new (to me) way Celeste Ng was tucking in some sort of symbolism, foreshadowing, etc.
- The depiction of James' parents going through every back door and jumping through every hoop to get him the opportunities that every other kid in town has... and the shame that James has about that and guilt for being ashamed. DEAD ON. Even though James grew up in the 70s, switch the names and it could be my sister's experience in the 90s. It's still a reality for many first generation Chinese families.

What didn't work:
- Literally nothing. God bless this woman.
( )
  ratatatatatat | Feb 21, 2024 |
"How was it possible, he wonders, to have been so wrong". This can be said to be the book's refrain. Everyone got it so wrong. Marilyn thought Lydia liked science and wanted to be a doctor, and James thought Lydia liked to be like everyone else. James thought that Lydia was tired of being different and regretted marrying him. Everyone thought that Jack was a Casanova but his great love is Nath! (This came out totally from nowhere. I didn't think this was necessary and reduced 0.5 stars, otherwise, this book would be a perfect read.) The one who is the most perceptive is Hannah. She is so seldom taken note of that it accords her the room and space to observe. You feel happy for her when her parents finally notice her towards the end of the book. ( )
  siok | Feb 7, 2024 |
A story of a dysfunctional mixed race family. The parents were the key to this messed up family. Each was afraid to acknowledge their disappointments in life. The father always felt excluded in life as an Asian-American. He was unable to tell his kids about his struggles and, thus, made them feel weak. The mother married before her dream of becoming a doctor was never reached and she fed this dream into her elder daughter who was so eager to keep her mom happy that she accepted this dream even though she was not good at science. This daughter ended up jumping into the lake behind their house, even though she could not swim. Because her brother had once saved her from drowning, she thought she would magically resurface and her life would begin anew. Kirkus: Ng's nuanced debut novel begins with the death of a teenage girl and then uses the mysterious circumstances of her drowning as a springboard to dive into the troubled waters beneath the calm surface of her Chinese-American family.When 16-year-old Lydia Lee fails to show up at breakfast one spring morning in 1977, and her body is later dragged from the lake in the Ohio college town where she and her biracial family don't quite fit in, her parentsblonde homemaker Marilyn and Chinese-American history professor James¥older brother and younger sister get swept into the churning emotional conflicts and currents they've long sought to evade. What, or who, compelled Lydia¥a promising student who could often be heard chatting happily on the phone; was doted on by her parents; and enjoyed an especially close relationship with her Harvard-bound brother, Nath¥to slip away from home and venture out in a rowboat late at night when she had always been deathly afraid of water, refusing to learn to swim? The surprising answers lie deep beneath the surface, and Ng, whose stories have won awards including the Pushcart Prize, keeps an admirable grip on the narrative's many strands as she expertly explores and exposes the Lee family's secrets: the dreams that have given way to disappointment; the unspoken insecurities, betrayals and yearnings; the myriad ways the Lees have failed to understand one another and, perhaps, themselves. These long-hidden, quietly explosive truths, weighted by issues of race and gender, slowly bubble to the surface of Ng's sensitive, absorbing novel and reverberate long after its final page.Ng's emotionally complex debut novel sucks you in like a strong current and holds you fast until its final secrets surface.
  bentstoker | Jan 26, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 364 (next | show all)
“Everything I Never Told You” is a beautifully crafted study of dysfunction and grief. Yes, it may miss a few notes, but the ones it does play will resonate with anyone who has ever had a family drama, never mind a gift.
added by ozzer | editBoston Globe, Clea Simon (Jul 1, 2014)
 
Everything I Never Told You," Celeste Ng's excellent first novel about family, love and ambition, opens with a death.....In the end, Ng deftly pulls together the strands of this complex, multigenerational novel. "Everything I Never Told You" is an engaging work that casts a powerful light on the secrets that have kept an American family together — and that finally end up tearing it apart.
 
Celeste Ng recounts this tragically sad story with sympathy and style and, in its denouement, a real sense of redemption.
 

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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Ng, Celesteprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Campbell, CassandraNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Jakobeit, BrigitteÜbersetzersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Peterzon-Kotte, SaskiaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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for my family
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Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything bus this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast. -Chapter One
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"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, 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 center of every party. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest of the family-Hannah-who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and 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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The daughter of a Chinese American family is found dead, turning the family's lives upside down.
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