Book Review: LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE by Celeste Ng

Title: Little Fires Everywhere

Author: Celeste Ng
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group UK
Expected Publication: 11 January 2018

Read: October 2017

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"It’s not a question of deserving. I just think a mother has a right to raise her own child."

Book Description (Goodreads):

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When the Richardsons’ friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. 

My musings:

I admit that Little Fires Everywhere wasn’t on my radar at all until I heard so many good things about it from the bookish community that it became a “must-read” for me. I was delighted when I received a copy from Netgalley for review. And as it so often turns out, this little gem of a book easily made it on my favourites list for 2017 – I loved it!

Little Fires Everywhere is a character driven drama set in the ordered suburb of Shaker Heights, where everything is carefully planned and controlled by many rules residents must adhere to. It is obvious from the start that the arrival of a non-conformist person would wreak havoc in the lives of people no longer used to individuality. I had no doubts that artist Mia, with her mysterious past and unconventional lifestyle, would cause some ripples.

Not even a real bed, she thought. Not even a real couch. What kind of grown woman sits on the floor, sleeps on the floor? What kind of life was this?

I also wasn’t surprised that Mia was a magnet to young Lizzie, who didn’t fit into the Shaker Heights world at all, whilst Pearl felt drawn to the Richardson family, whose lives seemed so ordered and predictable compared to her own. Don’t we always long for the very thing we can’t have? Ng’s characterisations are spot-on, and all her characters literally leap off the page because they seem so real! I found her use of names interesting: Mia was always mentioned by her first name, whilst Elena Richardson was always “Mrs Richardson”, which cleverly created a distance between her character and the reader and reflected her somewhat stand-offish nature.

In Little Fires Everywhere, Ng raises several moral and ethical dilemmas which still haunted me long after finishing the book . For example: is motherhood determined by biology, or by the love and security one can give a child? Should motherhood be determined by wealth, and the ability to provide? Won’t that mean that parenthood becomes a luxury of the rich? I felt myself torn with empathy for each and every character, knowing there would be no solution that would ever suit all involved. Most of all though, I loved and felt for Izzy, and my heart broke for her many times over.  I just wanted to hug this child and tell her how great she was!

So whilst Little Fires Everywhere explored several different topics through the eyes of these very different characters, the main theme that stood out for me was motherhood in all its varied forms and guises. Elena Richardson, who is so stunned and confused about her youngest daughter, who just doesn’t fit the mould. Mia, who is much more liberal in her views but has still imposed an exile of sorts on her only child. And Linda McCullough, who wants a baby so badly that she would not hesitate to take it from its own mother.

To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind on Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once.

Ng’s writing is beautiful, her characters multi-dimensional and realistically drawn. The book drew me into its world like only few novels can, and left a ripple of unease and questions in my mind that cannot be easily answered. One of my most memorable reads of the year, and one I cannot recommend strongly enough!

Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.