Little Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You, told the story of a biracial family in the Midwest. Her most recent effort, Little Fires Everywhere, is centered in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where the author spent part of her childhood. The book tells the story of the Richardson family—parents Bill and Elena, and children Trip, Lexie, Moody, and Isabelle—and Mia and Pearl Warren, who rent the upstairs of the Richardsons’ duplex. The two families become slowly entangled and nearly strangle one another before the “little fires” are set.
In both books, Ng gives near-plot-spoiler information in the first few pages, with the reader left to discover how the story ended up this way. She is such a terrific writer that the reader wants to follow her careful lead.
Ng set the story in the 1990s (we’re sure because the teens watch Jerry Springer every day after school) so that there was no social media or ease of obtaining information from the Internet. A subplot concerning an abandoned Chinese baby and a custody battle inserts an additional pair of mothers into this contest between rule-bound Mrs. Richardson (rarely Elena) and free spirit Mia. The complexity of the mother-daughter relationship is front and center in nearly every chapter.
It’s too hard not to offer spoilers, so I would just encourage you to read this novel!