Celeste Ng
Author of Little Fires Everywhere
About the Author
Celeste Ng was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio. She attended Harvard University and studied English. She went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan and earned her Master's of Fine Arts in writing. While attending the University of Michigan, Ng won show more the Hopwood Award for her short story, What Passes Over. Ng was a recipient of a Pushcart Prize in 2012 for her story Girls, At Play. Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You: A Novel, is a literary thriller that focuses on an American family in 1970s Ohio. This book won Amazon book of the Year in 2014. Little Fires Everywhere is her second novel, published in September 2017. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Disambiguation Notice:
The novelist is also the author of Let's Go Western Europe 2002, a travel series written by Harvard students.
Image credit: 2018 National Book Festival By Avery Jensen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72705538
Works by Celeste Ng
Girls, At Play 5 copies
Clearing the Bones 2 copies
Every Little Thing 2 copies
Ng, Celeste Archive 1 copy
Associated Works
6 Shorts 2017: The Finalists for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award (2017) — Contributor — 5 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1980
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Shaker Heights, Ohio, USA - Education
- Harvard University (BA ∙ MFA)
University of Michigan (MFA) - Short biography
- Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, won the Hopwood Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the ALA's Alex Award and is a 2016 NEA fellow. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website at http://celesteng.com or follow her on Twitter: @pronounced_ing.
- Disambiguation notice
- The novelist is also the author of Let's Go Western Europe 2002, a travel series written by Harvard students.
Members
Reviews
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Lydia, the much-favoured middle child of a "mixed" marriage, is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Unsurprisingly, her passing has an overwhelming effect on her family and its dynamics. Ng takes the reader into the heads and memories of the entire Lee family, exposing cracks in the marriage, in its parent/child relationships, and between siblings. Realistically plotted, beautifully written, the book is compulsively readable, and the characters very believable and artfully crafted. I enjoyed this novel quite a bit.… (more)
This is one of those books that I always saw, but never did read the plot carefully to see if I really wanted to read it plus I always have too many books that I want to read to add another one. When I found it in my Little Free Library, I said here's my chance before someone else grabbed it.
Very interesting book with three plots going on at the same time. It took a while to get to the crux of the book (almost half way through). I liked the Richardson family with their stair step kids all in high school but Izzy was a world apart from her siblings. Always angry, stating her point of view mostly in anger. I didn't like the way that their parents treated her. I'm thinking maybe because she was premature her mother was over protective. Doubtful in my opinion.
I didn't like the way that Mrs. Richardson (and why were they called that throughout the book except once in a while Elena and Bill) treated her tenant Mia and her daughter Pearl who fit into their life well with the kids so close in age to her, like they were vagabonds (even though they practically were) and looking into Mia's life. Shouldn't she have done that before they moved in?
The open ending didn't do it for me. I wanted to know what happened in the future with everyone.… (more)
Very interesting book with three plots going on at the same time. It took a while to get to the crux of the book (almost half way through). I liked the Richardson family with their stair step kids all in high school but Izzy was a world apart from her siblings. Always angry, stating her point of view mostly in anger. I didn't like the way that their parents treated her. I'm thinking maybe because she was premature her mother was over protective. Doubtful in my opinion.
I didn't like the way that Mrs. Richardson (and why were they called that throughout the book except once in a while Elena and Bill) treated her tenant Mia and her daughter Pearl who fit into their life well with the kids so close in age to her, like they were vagabonds (even though they practically were) and looking into Mia's life. Shouldn't she have done that before they moved in?
The open ending didn't do it for me. I wanted to know what happened in the future with everyone.… (more)
Book on CD narrated by Lucy Liu
From the book jacket: Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. His mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet left the family when he was nine years old. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her.
My reaction
This was uncomfortably plausible. Ng holds a magnifying glass to current and past events and predicts the likely outcome, especially if the silent majority remains silent and complacent when “it doesn’t effect US.”
Bird is a wonderful character. He’s smart and observant. The political climate in which he lives has resulted in a kind of maturity beyond his years. My heart bleeds for his father, who, to protect his child, must hold everything he knows inside – never sharing, never discussing, never searching for answers.
I loved the network of librarians who were used to thwart the “powers that be.” The story lost a little momentum in the second part, when Ng explored Margaret’s story, but it picked up again in part three. There were times when my heart was in my throat. I can hardly wait for my book club meeting to discuss!
The audiobook is narrated by Lucy Liu, who does a fine job of it. She sets a good pace and I was never confused about who was speaking.… (more)
From the book jacket: Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. His mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet left the family when he was nine years old. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her.
My reaction
This was uncomfortably plausible. Ng holds a magnifying glass to current and past events and predicts the likely outcome, especially if the silent majority remains silent and complacent when “it doesn’t effect US.”
Bird is a wonderful character. He’s smart and observant. The political climate in which he lives has resulted in a kind of maturity beyond his years. My heart bleeds for his father, who, to protect his child, must hold everything he knows inside – never sharing, never discussing, never searching for answers.
I loved the network of librarians who were used to thwart the “powers that be.” The story lost a little momentum in the second part, when Ng explored Margaret’s story, but it picked up again in part three. There were times when my heart was in my throat. I can hardly wait for my book club meeting to discuss!
The audiobook is narrated by Lucy Liu, who does a fine job of it. She sets a good pace and I was never confused about who was speaking.… (more)
This book was great. Great character development and all. This book had me hooked all through but especially through the last chapters. I loved it.
Lists
Five star books (2)
Overdue Podcast (1)
Racial identity (1)
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Fiction on Fire (1)
Best of 2017 (1)
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First Novels (1)
Secrets Books (2)
Female Author (2)
BookTok Adult (1)
Book Club 2017 (1)
2010s (1)
wish list (1)
Indie Next Picks (1)
To Read (1)
2020 (1)
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 10
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 16,925
- Popularity
- #1,319
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 831
- ISBNs
- 155
- Languages
- 17
- Favorited
- 13
