Everything I Never told You by Celeste Ng
Everything I Never told You reinforces a quintessential truth about page-turners: page-turners can also be great literature. Catalogued among experts like Lily King (Euphoria) and Jennifer Egan (a visit from the goon squad), Celeste Ng’s novel silently yearns to be read much like youngest daughter in the novel quietly yearns for attention.
It is harrowing, pleading, insistent. Full of the longing of “wouldn’t it be nice if we were older” and rife with the consequences of growing up and missing out. Ng litters the shimmering tale with simile so accurate, I find smoky feelings materialize inside me and vie for space.
Set against the backdrop of a 1977 white-washed Ohio college town (and sometimes earlier), the Lees, an interracial couple with three children, lose their future in the first sentence: “Lydia is dead.” Lydia, the eager-to-please daughter who resembles the caucasian mother, is the vessel for her mother’s missed opportunity at medical school and her father’s inability to fit in. The parents fill Lydia with their hopes like a message in a bottle, singular in their focus, both desperate for reparation for their flawed pasts.
The book has been published in over 20 languages. On the traditional Chinese cover, the text - or characters - are shaded in such a way that the part of the character which indicates ear and mouth fade - a clever foreshadowing about the lack of communication in the book.
What makes the story so universal? It’s a story about loss, yes, but also of hope, of expectation. It’s about a cross-generational fight against an unfair system and the unavoidable defeat under its unfeeling fist. It’s an intricate family portrait, of which we are all the daughter, brother, mother, father - a house of cards built entirely of science textbooks, destined for collapse, only to smother the one upon whom it is built.
