Everything I Never Told You

Phenomenal book - read it as I was grieving loss of my brother and it was touching, beautifully written and soothing in some strange way.

Insightful, beautiful book!

I didn’t want to like this book because it was so sad; I wanted to give it 4 stars instead of 5. But…this story is really good; I can see “real” life in it.

Love this book!

Celeste Ng has a way of writing about family that feels so real—the love, the fractures, the quiet resentments, and the unspoken words that shape relationships over time. Everything I Never Told You is a stunning, emotionally layered novel that explores the weight of expectations, identity, and grief, all wrapped up in the mystery of Lydia’s death.As a big fan of Ng’s work, I was completely drawn into this story from the first sentence. Her writing is both delicate and powerful, peeling back the layers of the Lee family’s past to reveal their deeply ingrained struggles. The way she captures the unspoken pain between parents and children, the cultural and generational pressures, and the suffocating expectations placed on Lydia is sometimes painful to read—but in the best way.What makes this novel so powerful is that it's not just about what happened to Lydia but also about why. Ng masterfully untangles the complexities of family dynamics, race, and identity with a quiet intensity that lingers long after the last page. It’s heartbreaking yet beautifully written—a novel that hurts but also makes you think.If you love character-driven, emotional stories that explore family and identity with stunning prose, Everything I Never Told You is an absolute must-read. Celeste Ng proves once again that she is a master of capturing the raw, unspoken truths within families.

There is a death, and then everything begins to unravel.This is about a mixed Asian/ Caucasian family, and how problems filter through the past to affect decisions parents make and how it effects the family. In this family you have the added problem of being different, of being Asian.A very good book, I gave it four stars, because it was stereotypical. Not all Asian Americans are treated like this, and some people, no matter how different they are, are so confident they don't let their differences be an obstacle. My brother was one of those. We were Jewish in a small town of WASPs. His confidence spilled over to me, and that made all the difference. We stood up to people, and they not only respected us, they liked us.I am tired of stories focusing on the negative, because it reinforces our own self-pity, although this book does offer redemption.However, this family could be all our families. We are all different in some way, and as parents, we all make mistakes with our children expecting them to fulfill our unfulfilled dreams. This could be all of us.And so this may be hard to read, but maybe necessary.

Yes, it's a lot of detailed misery of a dysfunctional family. Yes, the time shifts from one decade to another. Yes, there are some tiresome passages.However, between the lines of the obvious, what is implied but not stated, is the kernel of this wonderful story. The biracial issue controls the entire story, stated clearly and often. The ineffectual father is who he is because he too was bruised by his ethnic identity. He thought he knew best how to save his children from the same prejudice. Alas, his children were just like he was. Cowed, afraid, ashamed, and reluctant. Their mother was a disappointment to her mother. Her mother was also a lost soul. Her father left home, and Marilyn was raised by her striving, disappointed mother. In turn, Marilyn, James' wife and mother to the three children in this book, followed her mother's recipes for disaster by insisting that her daughter, Marilyn be something she could never be. She even brought the dreaded Betty Crocker from her mother's home to her home. All these losses and social alienation went from generation to generation, intentionally promulgated by each generation of parenting.I found the father's actions, James's, perfectly logical regarding Louisa Chen. James could not undo his offspring's DNA or appearance, and could not reconcile society's proclamations of their status. But with Louisa Chen, he entertained a "do-over" -- a possible future reversal.The most interesting aspect of the text and each child's subsequent actions is the pecking order of the kids to their parents. Lydia's blue eyes apparently endeared her to her brown-eyed father; the other children also had brown eyes. Lydia was capable of scholarship, but as a pariah in her all-white community, she would never have the social support to reach for academic success. The son, Nath, was expected to go to Harvard like his father, but he wanted to study the cosmos and would have preferred MIT.All these things are nothing compared to what each child wanted most... a family who accepted them for who they were. Lydia was the preferred child, Nath and Hannah were simply extras on Lydia's stage, forgotten children; so unusual that the girl (Lydia) took precedence over the boy (Nath).The beauty of this text is the actual text itself. Sentences flow like honey from suggestion to action. Similies abound, the imagery is impeccable and the inevitability is profound.There is a point quite near the end, where it felt like something very big was about to be exposed, but Ms. Ng did not drop in any surprises. The revelations were parceled out in the right time and in the right amounts, so that when something becomes known to the reader, we already expected it. This last little red herring had the potential to be an unexpected explosion that would wreck the continuum, but it did not. This brief, almost alarming potential turn extinguished itself in an unimportant detail, but lets us, as readers know that it's the little stuff, the tiniest of observations, a slip of the tongue, a misperceived gesture that make the interpretation of people's actions (in life and fiction) unpredictable.It bothered me that so many people panned this wonderful book. It is a rich, multilayered, multigenerational story that as in life, we don't rely only on actions to be affected and changed.

EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOUBY: CELESTE NGI first read, "Everything I Never Told You," when it was first published in 2014. I wanted to re-read it to see if it still was worthy of the five stars that I had rated it back then and it was. I have read "Little Fires Everywhere," and watched its miniseries produced by Hulu. In both novels Celeste Ng captures beautifully dysfunctional family dynamics. I loved both books and I would encourage you to watch the miniseries of "Little Fires Everywhere," because it is excellent and varies a little from the book. The acting is incredible. In both novels Celeste Ng explores how parents expectations of their children is the catalyst for a tragic outcome that they never expected. Also, in both novels that unexpected heartbreak is told to the reader in the very beginning. Since this is a review for "Everything I Never Told You," I will focus on that one.The setting is during the 1970's which makes, "Everything I Never Told You," a historical novel, but I still think that the themes within that are so expertly explored are still relevant today. Celeste Ng crafted a realistic depiction of the discrimination that Asian Americans still face today. This novel in my humble opinion is even more heartbreaking because the beginning lines tell the story of every parents' worst nightmare. The title is pitch perfect for what ensues during flashbacks of how the Chinese American family of the Lee's ended up in the incredibly sad position that they now face.It is not a spoiler to say that the beginning sentence tells that the middle child of three in this family is dead. The reason why I have included it in this review is because it is stated in the synopsis of this novel. Over the course of reading you will discover how this happened. Was it murder? By reading you will easily figure out what happened to Lydia. This one remains my favorite perhaps because of how it does a great job of the character development and the question of what if? You will not be disappointed in this deep dive of how it examines the cost of weighing what can result if you want a better life for your child and you pick a favorite child who you want to do and have all of the things that you didn't have. Is being the favorite more helpful or harmful to the child who you as a parent pin all of your hopes and dreams that you in your own life didn't achieve? If only? It is a question that will haunt you as you read this UNFORGETTABLE, but realistic story that centers on one family's struggles to reconcile one of life's toughest consequences. It did affect me just as powerfully as the first time I read it and I would rate it Five sparkling and bright stars and it is absolutely perfectly written. I wouldn't change a thing. Highly, Highly Recommended!

Many reviewers have covered almost all the aspects of this book, and I have nothing more to add. Instead, I just have an urge to write something down after I finish the book. So this “review” may not help you decide whether to purchase/read the book or not.To begin with, I’m a Chinese born and raised in mainland China and finished my college there. Then I went to the U.S. and got my Ph.D., and recently got a job. My American friends say my English is good, but I know there is a hint or more of Chinese accent when I speak. I was once yelled at street by a drunkard to go back to China, and I’ve heard about offensive languages and doodles against Asian students in the university. In addition, I was very introvert and even back in China I was socially awkward. So when I started the pages that tell the stories of James Lee, I could feel him. But unlike James, I would gladly tell the difference between an egg roll and a spring roll when asked, maybe even feeling a little proud of the Chinese cuisine.This book is beautifully written, but the reading experience was quite unpleasant. Many times I paused and took a deep sigh, because the pain was so vivid. I don’t mind being different myself (and there are many Chinese students in my university, so I’m not even that different), but I’m approaching 30 and thinking about building a family. Will my kids enjoy growing up here? Will my kids have close friends like I did despite of my introversion? Will they have a healthy social life were they more into science than sports? Will they suffer legal discrimination like ex-police officer Peter Liang? Will they feel incomplete inside even if they are high achievers in their respective field? Will they eager to fit in but fail? Or maybe should I just go back to China like the drunkard once yelled?But that’s only one aspect of this book. I finished the book last night, and today when I reflect on it and compared my life with the kids, I realized how lucky I was. My parents love each other and they are also each other’s best friend in the world. I have an adorable little sister still in high school, and since I am so much older than her, there was no sibling rivalry. My parents have some expectations on us, and we probably have exceeded their expectations without being pushed. I vaguely remember holding some grudges against my father when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, but it melted away when my father bought me video games for my winter vacation. No broken family, no feeling of being ignored, no need of begging for even a shred of love, no heavy burden from love and expectations, and no feeling of being ignored. For that I’m truly grateful (and almost feel like bragging), and I wish I could say the same for my friends and my future family.

A novel about a child who dies unexpectedly is a pretty popular subject in literature, second only perhaps to the ubiquitous love story. Some of these stories can be insightful, such as the brilliant Ordinary People, and some can be awful, such as the hideous Lovely Bones. Unfortunately, Everything I Never Told You is probably closer in quality to Lovely Bones than it is to Ordinary People.The novel takes place in the American Midwest in the seventies. The twist is that the dead kid is of mixed parentage: her father is Chinese and her mother is an American Caucasian. Because the child, Lydia, dies in the first sentence of the novel, there is really no place for it to go but backward, beginning with the back stories of her parents. They met when the father was an associate professor at Harvard and her mother was his student. The mother found herself immediately attracted to this thin, serious man, and the initial aspect of their relationship is interesting. But a few oddball things show up. We are casually told that during his poor, student, pre-married years the Chinese father subsisted on burgers. A Chinese man in the 1950s subsisting on burgers? Unlikely. The mother was raised by a single mother who was intelligent and educated, and who had high hopes for her. But after Lydia’s mother marries the Chinese man, her mother never speaks to her again. Never, not even after the birth of her three children. Little explanation is given for this. Obviously, the mother disapproved of the marriage, but why? The reader is never told, and there is nothing shown about the mother’s character which would explain why she would react this way. She disappears from the narrative.We then get to Lydia’s story and find that her family situation is troubled. She has an older brother who, we are told, she adores, but never do their interactions with each other show this. She never shows affection towards him, and he himself is distant and cold towards her and intentionally ignores her when she seeks his comfort. There is a younger sister who nobody pays any attention to. The father and mother don’t seem to like any of them and they don’t seem to like each other. There is some explanation for this: Lydia's mother dreamt of becoming a doctor and had to end these dreams when she married and had children. But goodness, this isn’t exactly a unique American phenomenon, and it doesn’t explain why everyone dislikes each other, much less explain Lydia’s untimely demise. There is no love, no affection, no joy, no humor in this family. And again, except for the above, no given reason why. What IS the matter with dear old Dad, hiding away in his room every night to get away from them all?There are several comments regarding race in the novel. It is mentioned that the father and mother married only a few years after their marriage would have been illegal in many states. The children sometimes see pictures of themselves with others which make them feel like outsiders. The newspaper mentions that after Lydia’s death, “children of mixed backgrounds often struggle to find their place.” Yeah, sure, perhaps. But this is 1977, not 1947, and remember, she is not fully Chinese, she is half-Chinese. Some kids likely never noticed she was different at all.And the head-scratchers continue. The author mentions Johnny Carson’s “zingers.” No, no, no. There are about a dozen other ways to describe Johnny Carson’s humor; “zingers” would be about tenth on the list. Lydia decides she wants to hang around with the high school bad boy to establish a new identity for herself, and accepts from him a cigarette for the first time in her life. It makes her, “sharp and aware.” No. Anybody who has ever smoked a cigarette knows that the first time you smoke one it makes you dizzy and sick to your stomach.In the end, the title of this novel may be precisely what is wrong with it: the author not only doesn’t tell us everything, she barely tells us anything.

This is the story of 16y old Lydia, the middle child and eldest daughter of a mixed race Chinese-American family in the 1970s. But it is also the story of parents who try to live too much through their child, to force their dreams and desires on her without allowing her the freedom to follow her own dreams.The story starts with Lydia missing from her bedroom one morning and we are told she is already dead. Her body is found a few days later at the bottom of the lake, but no one can recall anything that might have upset her before her disappearance. Gradually the author peels back the layers of Lydia's life, through her own accounts as well as through the eyes of her parents, older brother, Nathan and younger sister, Hannah.Lydia's mother, Marilyn, blue eyed and blond had set her sights on becoming a doctor and certainly never planned on marrying young and having a family. But when James Lee stepped into her lecture room at Harvard she felt an instant attraction to the dark haired Chinese lecturer. James, educated as the only Chinese boy at a private school where his immigrant parents worked as janitor and cook, was flattered by her interest and not long after they were dating. Within a few months Nathan was on the way and the only solution in the 1960s was marriage, even though mixed race marriage was frowned upon and not even legal in some states. Telling herself she can go back to college later, James and Marilyn set up home in a small Ohio college town where James gets a teaching position and they are the only mixed race family in town.Nathan, the oldest child turns out to be similar to his father in looks and although he is smart and has just been offered a place at Harvard, his parents ignore him focusing all their hopes on blue eyed Lydia. James wants her to have the popularity denied to him and Marilyn wants her to become a doctor, but neither of them really know her or what she wants or feels and both seem oblivious to the weight that their expectations are piling on her shoulders. Hannah, the youngest child is ignored by everyone,but often unseen hears much of what is going on and is the most sensitive to everyone's feelings. Without Lydia, the family falls apart and James and Marilyn must both reevaluate their marriage and relationships with their remaining children.This is a very good debut novel. Celeste Ng's writing is beautiful and her characters all lovingly realised so that we almost feel we know them. She has an empathetic understanding of the complexities of family relationships and their dynamics and not only makes us feel what it is like to be the only non-Caucasians in a small American town in the 1970s but also what it is like to be a teenage girl who feels different and doesn't fit in.

I decided to read this book based on: 1. The high number of positive reviews it received, and 2. Due to its basis of a multicultural family, which I found intriguing as my own family is multicultural.The book starts off with the middle daughter, Lydia, of a middle-class family presumed to be missing and eventually found to be dead. The rest of the book discusses possible circumstances and suspects that may have contributed or directly led to her death. We know where she died, but not how she died until the end of the book.This book is set in the 70's. It is about a multicultural family (Chinese father, White mother, mixed-race children) living in a small town in Ohio. The family desperately want their kids to fit in, as any parent would. However, the kids find it hard to fit in as they are often isolated from their schoolmates for being, or rather LOOKING different. The parents especially wish for their middle child, Lydia, to fit in. She is considered the prettiest of the 3 children because despite her black hair and Asian features, she most resembles her White mother and she has blue eyes. Her parents favor her on her looks alone. They expect a lot from her. Her father wants her to be popular and buys her nice gifts that he doesn't buy for his other kids. Her mother wants Lydia to be intelligent and to become a doctor; something we later learn she herself wasn't able to do because she was married and got pregnant young, at which point her husband preferred she stay home and care for the kids. Lydia's mother goes so far as to check abd correcf Lydia's homework each morning, whicb she doesn't do for her other kids.The pressure from her family is too much for Lydia. She fakes being popular in front of her parents by pretending to talk to friends on the phone, when she is really talking to a dead line or offering homework help. She fakes being intelligent in subjects she struggles with by hiding bad test grades from her parents. She eventually befriends a "bad boy" to boost her reputation, but they develop a genuine friendship and we are lead to believe they are secretly dating.Eventually, all the pressure from Lydia's parents and peers becomes too much for her, and she "disappears". This is where we start learning the back story of the other characters. We learn that Lydia's father is a first generation American and faced a lot of discrimination trying to get a professorial job due to his being Chinese. We learn how Lydia's mother gave up her dreams and ambitions for love, only to regret it later and become bitter about it.One of the primary themes viewed in this novel is how each parent tries to relive their failed dreams and ambitions through their daughter Lydia. For some reason, they do not have these same expectationa of their older son or younger daughter. The father views his older son as a version of his younger self, and therefore seems to think his son can't be successful since the father failed to complete his dreams. The younger daughter was not a planned pregnancy and is an afterthought throughout the book.This novel could truly have been set in the present day instead of in the 70's. Although the author makes it seem as if being a mixed-race family in a small town is the root of many of the family's problems, I did not see this as the case at all. The family's problems seem to stem from the failure of the parents and their attempts to live vicariously through their daughter, which can happen in any family. This is the TRUE theme of the novel. While the author reiterates how the children are isolated at school because of their mixed ethnicity, I find this hard to believe - even in the 70's. In the 70's, there were many black and Japanese groups living in the area (either to escape the worst of racism or to take advatage of the farming opportunities), as well as diverse European ethnic groups. (However, I can understand the family being stared at or judged when venturing out as a unit.) Lydia's older brother is very protective of her. I find it hard to believe that he is not jealous of her when he is constantly being shafted by his parents and picked on by his dad. The baby of the family is often the most spoiled and coddled. Instead, Lydia's younger sister is invisible to her family. She is also protective of Lydia instead of being jealous of everything Lydia gets and she doesn't. There is a lot of love and no competition between the siblings. I find this impossible to believe. I too come from a 3 child family of 1 boy and 2 girls and we were constantly competing for the love and affection of our parents, as well as competing against each other.Lastly, the author could have done a better job with Lydia's death. Without giving anything away, her death is linked to an event in her childhood. That event from her childhood should have been more detailed and better explained. As it stands, the connection is so tenuous that it borders on ridiculous.This novel could truly describe any family in the ...

It is very rare that I give a read a five star rating. I have a high list of literary criteria that a book must meet before I consider this. First, the point has to be solid. There must be a story within the story. History must be included or considered in the craft to be considered complex enough for me to consider this art. There must be an emotive quality or drive both for the protagonist and characters and for the "audience". Culture richness in this world is something easily avoided in books and movies but I find when this is the case, something serious is lacking. Even if the book is fantasy, culture should exist as well as a semblance of belief, even if that belief is science. There must be believable tension. It must benefit the reader in some way. It must show perspective, contour lines AND negative space. The book should carry a level of insight. Which brings me to metaphor and irony. These are the most important. A good voice for each character/narrator and an understanding of how that voice will be understood by the reader. Vivid, clear images that stay in a person's mind. I would rather read a good book than watch a movie because the pictures are better. I should be able to say this at the end of any decent written work. Characters must have complexity and depth. Extensive research must show. We do nothing great alone including invention. Every part of any work of art carries with it some element of influence. New ideas can be built from that influence and in my mind become the very definition of art when this is achieved. The editing must be done professionally, but not necessarily by a professional and I couldn't care less where you publish. My list is much longer but this will give you some idea of what I look for in a book. Having personally lost someone in my immediate family and having that death permanently destroy the family's structure even twenty years later, I can tell Celeste Ng, has done her homework in one way or another. This book exceeds above and beyond all of my expectations and I highly recommend it. Even a realistic take on human psychology is considered in this book and I have compared it to works such as, "As I Lay Dying," by William Faulkner, where in the midst of poverty (any kind of poverty such as physical OR emotional needs) people become Islands even in a crowd. This is the reality of competing for resources. Ng points out both the love and the damage that can unfold in the midst of communication absence and emotional neglect or emotional poverty. These two chaotic events existing under one roof can only result in both pain and enlightenment. The only negative thing I have to say about this book is, there is a typo in the last chapter - a "he," where there should be a "she". It's minor, but jarring for the reader. It pulls us out of the story. It's important to double check the work of editors. Regardless, I would be honored to read anything this writer has to offer. I would probably even resort to reading her calendar if the opportunity presented itself, just for fear of missing any element of the Muse. THIS book is timeless.

This book is filled with sadness, with longing for love, of what might have been, what could have been or should have been. I heartily disliked Marilyn and James Lee who favor Lydia, their middle child, while they ignore oldest child, Nath, and youngest child, Hannah. These parents treat these two as if they don't matter. As the book continues, I kind of begin to see their way of looking at life, somewhat.James and Marilyn meet at college, both excellent, dedicated students. Marilyn has her heart set on being a doctor. She and James have an affair, James is so different than any man she has ever met. She becomes pregnant, so the two marry. Son, Nath, is born. Marilyn didn't want to be a doctor bad enough or she wouldn't have let this happen. But she loves James, she would have married him no matter what. Her divorced mother disowns her. Doris says her marriage to an Oriental isn't right. But for many years, Marilyn looks at women doctors and remembers that could have been her.James, a Chinese born in the United States, goes to a school in Iowa, the only Chinese student. His parents work at the school, his father a handiman, his mother a cook. He always felt out of place, never fitting in, being ashamed of his heritage. The children, Nath and Hannah look Chinese. Lydia has her father's black hair, but her mother's blue eyes. She looks very much like her mother, very Caucausion. James wants his daughter to be popular, for her peers to like her. He tells her continually to smile, to speak nicely to people, tells her ways to make others like and approve of her. James is never popular, well liked. He is a history professor in a small town college in Ohio, has tried to get a professor's job at a major university. He feels he is discriminated against because he is an Oriental. Marilyn has never cared about being popular and well liked. After Lydia's death, he has an affair with a young woman, Louisa Chen, his teaching assistant. This is the kind of woman he should have married he thinks.Lydia's mother wants her to be the doctor she never was, is buying her books about medicine, enrolling her in science classes, taking her to science fairs, pushing her towards medicine. Lydia loves her mother, hates to disappoint her mom, fears her mother will run away, will desert the family.Lydia turns sixteen and is tired of having to be somebody she is not and doesn't want to be.This this book is about another dysfunctional family and is filled with pain, with characters who want to love each other, especially Hannah, but don't know how to let others know. James feels inferior because he is Chinese.The book begins in the 50's with parents in school, continues until 1977. Have things changed since then? Let's hope so. The writing is sharp, good, detailed, beautiful writing. However, the book is too bleak and painful. The characters don't know each other nor do they want to. I feel sorry for the children for having such terrible parents, for not allowing them to be the characters they need to be and want to be. This book is so sad. A story of a marriage that never should have been. Of the cast of characters Marilyn is the worse, not knowing what she wants out of life and insisting her daughter, Lydia , be the person her mother always wanted to be.

Literature has always told us about families – families in other times, families in different cultures and, of course, modern families. Contemporary family dynamics described without the advantage of historical perspective; described with the immediacy of right now, are often especially personal and easy to relate to. Any of these families could, presumably, resemble ours.Authors do not usually go on about the pleasures of families or describe perfectly functional families because the first would quickly bore us all and we doubt that a fully functional family exists. We expect to experience flaws in any human relationship and we read a great family story to see how a family’s dysfunction will affect the various members of the family, and more specifically a main character who is, more often, the focus of our interest.Celeste Ng in Everything I Never Told You presents us with Lydia and her family – a family with mixed ethnic origins, in this case one Chinese American partner (the Dad) and one white American partner (the Mom). While it is true that such a pairing would hardly make us blink in 2014 that was not the case when James and Marilyn married to become the Lees who produced Lydia, Nathan and Hannah.Although the parents would blame the society’s disapproval for the tragedy they subsequently experience, we, the readers, can see other factors afoot in the family which could have contributed to the outcome. Mrs. Lee wanted to study medicine and gave up her goals after the marriage, for example. How does this affect the family? The reader gets to sift through a number of factors which could have lead to the tragedy the Lees experience and this sifting represents a fair summary of things that can go wrong inside and outside of families. How much did the interethnic nature of the Lees marriage enter into their loss?Although prejudice is a minor theme in this book James Lee hardly seems very Asian, except genetically, yet some people do have a negative reaction to this pairing and the children are taunted by other children. How much of a role does societal pressure play in the lives of these family members? How much of a role does lack of communication play? What happens when families fail to speak intimately with each other, when unspoken motives and conclusions pile up, when family members make assumptions about how the other members of the family feel or what they want?As in The Lovely Bones the character involved in the tragedy that is at the heart of this book comes back to tell the reader what happened. However, the Lee family does not ever find out what we, as readers, do. Each family member is left to interpret events in his/her own way with all the attendant effects on their lives as they go forward. Their demons are filtered through their own perceptions and will affect each of their lives differently. What affects will these demons have on their lives?