Everything I Never Told You Paperback – May 12, 2015

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.

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.

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 present day and age. Don't read this novel for a cultural experience or to read about what the 70's were like. Read it to see how parents project their dreams onto their kids and the effect that has on the kids. While parts of the novel could have been better thought out, the writing and editing itself was good. I'd give this book 3 stars.