“I could tell by the eyes.” She then pulls hers into slits. I enjoyed how Ng introduced us to the struggles and challenges facing an American Interracial couple that did not deal with a Black and White coupling, as most books that want to address interracial circumstances are likely to do, but instead a first generation Asian-American and Caucasian pairing in the form of James and Marilyn Lee. She kicks off this book in an open sprint and maintains a decent “keep up and pay attention” pace that can be tough going in some bits (think of metaphorical hills within the plot) but her pace never drags.įor a story delivered in one of the most deceptively minimal and straightforward writing styles I’ve read in a very long time, Ng does the amazing job of making the reader a fly-on-the-wall spectator into the lives of James and Marilyn Lee, and their children Nathan, Lydia and Hannah. Celested Ng, however, doesn’t really do this. Most of us have grown to expect a little bit of a preamble from most writers at the start of a novel, as they flesh out their characters and the world they’ve created. My third reaction was, “Will my book club ever pick a non-depressing book *sigh*?”Ģ97 pages later I had most of the answers to the questions I sought…well, with the exception of the my book-club’s fondness for pensive and dark story-lines. My second reaction was, “Who the heck is Lydia?” My first reaction was, “Geez, how can someone be dead already?” These are the two opening lines of Celeste Ng’s novel, “Everything I Never Told” that won the Amazon book of the year in 2014.
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