Title: Everything I Never Told You
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Book Description:
“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins
this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town
Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are
determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But
when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that
has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into
chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything
I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family
portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons,
and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
My musings:
“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.”
This must be one of the saddest and most foreshadowing opening
sentences I’ve ever come across, and it was a sign of things to come. Rarely
has a book pierced straight through me like this heart-breaking novel of dysfunctional
family dynamics, secrets, broken dreams and things left unsaid until it is too
late. I loved Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere for her portrayal of family
life, and this one (her previous novel) shows the same astute insights into the
very hearts of her characters, until they are laid bare in front of us.
Ng’s skill lies in the way she presents relatable
characters, slowly peeling away layer after layer until all their secrets are
revealed. As a reader I could relate to each member of the Lee family, recognise
their feelings, hopes and ambitions, find traces of those in my own heart.
Everything I Never Told You is all about parents, and the way their broken
dreams affect their children – how they form their personality, the way they
view the world, their relationships and their futures. The terrible thing about
this book is that the parents, James and Marilyn, love their children and want
only the best for them, but in doing so, put a terrible burden on their
shoulders. Each child assumes a certain role in the family, with all the expectations
resting on Lydia, who slowly gets crushed under their weight. On one hand, her
father constantly tells her to fit in, to be like everyone else, to work hard
towards having lots of friends and being popular. On the other hand, her mother
tells her to stand out from the rest, to be exceptional, to live the life
Marilyn wanted but couldn’t have. When Lydia finds herself floundering, not
living up to either of her parent’s expectations, she is already so entrenched
in her role that she cannot see a way out.
Looking back on my own childhood, I could see that we, too,
each played a role, even long into adulthood. I left home at eighteen,
emigrated to the other side of the world and had children of my own, and yet
every time I stepped off the plane to visit my childhood home I was straight
back in that role. Maybe that was part of the reason why my heart simply broke
for Lydia as I could see her drowning. This was such a sad, sad story! Although
I loved Ng’s writing, I had to take small breaks in between chapters, as the
sheer weight of sadness in the Lee family infiltrated small corners of my life
to a point where I was thinking about the book constantly. It shows the skill
of an author to create characters so real that they form three dimensional
pictures in the reader’s mind, and Lydia’s sad blue eyes haunted me as I
balanced on the brink between waking and sleep at night. It seemed that every
single character in this story carried a sadness so profound that it shaped
every moment of their existence. Ng writes beautifully, in a language that
easily carried you straight into the heart of the story. I look forward to
reading more from this talented author!
No comments:
Post a Comment