Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a subdivision built on order where well off families live the American dream: good jobs, home ownership, well-ordered lives, and gifted kids earmarked for prestigious universities. It seems the community channels the original Shaker settlers, being a "patch of heaven on earth, a refuge from the world," a utopia based on harmony and order.

The Richardson family, a defense attorney father and journalist mother with two sons and two daughters, appear to be the ideal family. Mrs. Richardson inherited a house which she lets for low rent, a "form of charity" for the deserving poor.

Itinerant artist Mia Warren and her teenaged daughter Pearl move into the rented home. Pearl has been promised their frequent moves are over. For the first time she has to care what her peers think of her; she's in for the long haul.

"They dazzled her, these Richardsons..."

Moody Richardson befriends Pearl, who is like no one he's ever met before. Pearl is enchanted with the Richardson family and spends her free time with them. She has a crush on the eldest boy Trip and learns fashion from Lexie. Izzy is the family misfit, born to 'push buttons,' an original thinker who won't fit in, but who finds a kindred spirit in the free thinking Mia.

Things get complicated when sexual liaisons arise. One results in an unplanned pregnancy.

Meanwhile, Mr. Richardson is defending a Shaker Heights couple in a legal battle over the Chinese American child they are adopting when the birth mother tries to get her baby back.

"I mean, we're lucky. No one sees race here.""Everyone sees race, Lex," said Moody. "The only difference is who pretends not to."

The local art gallery has an exhibit of photography. Mia is clearly in one of the portraits. Mrs. Richardson puts her reporter skills to work to find out who this Mia really is and what she has been running from.

There is so much going on in this novel: Racism; the question of who 'real' mothers are (Biological? Adopted? Spiritual?); the discrepancy between what a child needs and what it is believed they need; choices of conformity and self-realization.

It is a joy to read, the characters so unique and vivid, their story lines so delightfully intertwined. There are enough ideas and insights into American life to keep a book club going for several sessions. But the book reads like butter, quick and easy and sweet.

Celeste Ng's first book Everything I Never Told You was a huge critical and popular hit. In Little Fires Everywhere she will secure her place in reader's hearts, as well as her place as one of our best young writers.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a family of scientists. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and she is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.

Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
Penguin Press
On Sale Date: September 12, 2017
ISBN 9780735224292, 0735224293
Hardcover |  352 pages
$27.00 USD, $36.00 CAD
Fiction / Literary

Mini Reviews: Family Problems

Bridget Jones's Baby by Helen Fielding

I enjoyed Bridget Jones's Diary and the movie based on the novel. It is loosely based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Very loosely! Bridget was fresh and fun. I read the second book in the series but missed the third installment.

When I won a copy of Bridget Jones's Baby from Read it Forward I anticipated revisiting Bridget. I'd been reading many heavy and dark books. I needed a bit of fun fluff.

I found book four to be formulaic. Bridget, Mark, and Daniel, even Jones's parents, were exactly who we've always known them to be. The stories seemed, well, thin.

But I recall my Jane Austen professor teaching about the satisfaction readers get from the known, the expected anticipation fulfilled, and the wish-fulfillment ending. This book offers readers all that. Like an old-fashioned sitcom, the characters don't change and we love it. Their stupid reactions are true to what we have always known about them, and we feel self-satisfied that we knew all along how it would be. And we do get the ending we always wanted.

Which all adds up to exactly the kind of read I needed: a few hours with old friends, nothing taxing, a few laughs shared, and when I turned out the light there were no troubling thoughts to keep me awake. Sweet dreams--Thanks, Bridget. You did it again.

I received a free book from Read it Forward.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng is an absorbing read opening with the lines "Lydia is dead. But they don't know it yet."

Centering on a Chinese American family living in a small Ohio college town in the 1970s, Ng strips away the facade and reveals that we may keep our fears and painful past to ourselves, but they play out in our acts and desires, hurting not only ourselves but our children.

Well deserved New York Times Notable Book and bestseller. Highly recommended.

The Little Paris Book Shop by Nina George was my book club pick of the month. Being a best seller, and liked by some of by Goodreads friends, I had hopes of a fun, but light, read. I did not enjoy it. I read 190 pages then skipped to the end.

Twenty years ago, bookseller Perdu was jilted by his married lover, and he's been a heartbroken, bitter man ever since--until he meets a woman who stirs the feelings that have been long dead. Instead of pursuing a relationship, he finally reads the goodbye letter from his past lover. He goes on a quest down the river to discover more.

The translation is at times quirky. I didn't buy Perdu's twenty-year grief over a woman who was never going to be all his anyway. And the ending is a little, well, uncomfortable.