Tag: Celeste Ng

Review 2220: Our Missing Hearts

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After reading two pretty good domestic dramas by Celeste Ng, I wasn’t really prepared for a dystopian novel. Although I occasionally read dystopian fiction, it’s not really my thing. And this one gave me more trouble than most.

Bird is an 11-year-old biracial boy whose Chinese mother, a poet, disappeared from the lives of himself and his father years ago. They are living in difficult times because of PACT, a law that requires everyone to watch others for un-American activities and codifies racism against Asians, particularly those of Chinese ancestry. The historical record for many periods has been blacked out, and lots of books are banned. Bird’s mother Margaret’s poem has become a rallying cry for those against this system, especially against the removal of children from the care of parents deemed unsuitable. Bird doesn’t see that his father—demoted from a linguistic professor to a library book shelver presumably because of his marriage—has been trying to protect him by teaching him not to stand out.

After his best friend’s disappearance, Bird receives a message from his mother. He begins trying to remember her and eventually to find her.

My biggest problem with this book is its dual nature. Young adult novels, except really great ones, tend to have a certain style, and the first part of this novel is so much in that style, written from Bird’s point of view, that I finally googled it to see what genre it fell into. Then Bird finds his mother, and the next section is supposed to be Margaret telling Bird about her life. It is not written as dialogue, and there is a lot of information there that a mother would not tell her 11-year-old son. Okay, I get it—it’s her memories, but the novel keeps repeating that she’s continuing her story. And it’s way too long with too much extraneous information that’s inappropriate for this purpose. About her wild days? Her lovers? The bite marks she made on his father’s neck? Come on.

I was about 2/3 through the novel, but it lost me there. This was a DNF for me.

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Day 1237: Little Fires Everywhere

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Cover for Little Fires EverywhereBest of Five!
One Saturday morning, Izzy, the youngest Richardson child, sets fire to the house and leaves. As in her previous novel, Ng begins with the end of the novel to show how it comes to pass.

We don’t really get to Izzy right away, however. We start with Mrs. Richardson and her duplex house in Shaker Heights. Although the family doesn’t need the rent from the duplex, Mrs. Richardson likes to think she is helping someone worthy by leasing the apartments to the right person. In this case, she rents one to Mia, an artist, and her daughter Pearl.

Mia and Pearl have lived a wandering life, settling in a city as long as it takes Mia to finish a project and then moving on. Mia makes some money from her work and occasionally takes a part-time job to supplement their meager income. Upon arriving in Shaker Heights, however, Mia has unexpectedly announced that they can stay. She also reluctantly accepts a part-time job as a house cleaner and cook that Mrs. Richardson pushes on her.

The plot gets moving around a situation that seemingly has little to do with either Mia or Mrs. Richardson. Mrs. Richardson’s friend Mrs. McCullough is close to adopting a little girl of Chinese heritage when the baby’s mother, who has been searching for her, sues for custody.

When Mrs. Richardson figures out that it was Mia who told the mother who had the baby, she begins investigating Mia. It is her self-righteousness as well as her misunderstanding of some of the facts she gleans that mount up and provoke Izzy’s outburst.

At first, I was a little impatient with this novel. Ng certainly understands the adolescent psyche, but in many ways, this novel seemed too similar to her previous one, Everything I Never Told You. She knows how to tell a story, however, and she understands complexity in relationships, so ultimately I was swept up.

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Day 686: Everything I Never Told You

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Cover for Everything I Never Told YouI just applied a new look to my site! Let me know how you like it.

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From the beginning of Everything I Never Told You, we know that Lydia Lee is dead, but her family doesn’t, and it is awhile before we understand what happened. Lydia’s story has its roots in her family history.

In 1970’s small-town Ohio, the Lees are outsiders, the only mixed race family in town. James Lee is of Chinese heritage, a history professor at the local college. Marilyn Lee is white, a former Harvard medical student who gave up her dreams of becoming a doctor when she became pregnant with Nath, their son.

Once the police begin looking into Lydia’s disappearance, it soon becomes clear that she was leading a double life. Her parents believe her to be a popular girl and a good student with a brilliant future. But when police begin questioning her supposed friends after she is reported missing, the teens claim to hardly know her. She is close to failing some of her classes, and Nath is aware that she has been spending time with their neighbor, Jack, a boy with a bad reputation.

This novel is extremely sad, about the effect on young people of their parents’ insecurities and expectations, about misunderstandings and lack of communication, and about how an event in the family’s past affected Lydia’s behavior.

The novel is moving and well written, exploring the tensions between maintaining individuality and fitting in and the stresses caused by parents only wanting the best for their child. After being almost unremittingly sad for the entire novel, it ends on a more hopeful note, perhaps unrealistically.

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