Everything I Never Told You

Review

I loved this book! After reading Little Fires Everywhere earlier this year, I was eager to read another from Celeste Ng. Even so, I was a little surprised by how much I enjoyed this one, given that Little Fires Everywhere got more hype (from what I saw). I love a good story about a dysfunctional family, but they can be a bit of a risky proposition. In a not-so-good family drama, all of the problems in the story can be resolved from the outset with a good long conversation and maybe some therapy—and crucially, there's no hint to the reader as to why that conversation doesn't happen. In Everything I Never Told You, though, it's painfully clear what it is that's getting in the way of the happy resolution that everyone wants. All of the characters in this story are lying to one another, but admitting that to themselves would mean abandoning the images they've built up about both themselves and their loved ones. It's a crippling state to be in, and it's one that I think anyone reading the book can empathize with. The character who suffers most from this self-suppression is Lydia, who, ironically, is also the character best able to perceive the desires of her family members, but I was equally heartbroken at the plight of those around her. Her younger sister, Hannah, just wants to be loved and cared for, but has become a reclusive little "mouse" in order to give her parents what they want, which is unfettered access to their favorite child, Lydia. Jack, the neighbor whom Lydia befriends, is secretly in love with her older brother Nathaniel, but can't show it. Nathaniel buries himself in his schoolwork and a fascination with astronauts so that he doesn't have to confront his father, who is cruel to Nathaniel mostly because Nathaniel is too like him. No one is safe from the weight of their own, and others', expectations, and I think that that's what this book is about at its core—the expectations that we have of ourselves and our family members, that communities have about one another (the Lee family being the only Asian-American family in their whitebread suburban town), that we have of the future. This review is at serious risk of turning into a five-paragraph essay, so I'm going to close it out here and just say that reading this book makes me really grateful to have a family that doesn't deal so heavily in expectation.