A review of Everything I Never Told You, a book that should get more attention in the years to come.
By David F.
Everything I Never Told You is simply a marvelous novel written by Celeste Ng. Let me tell you, let me tell you FIRSTHAND that it is some great stuff. It deals with the death of a family member and the hardships of being Chinese American in the 1970s.
Lydia Lee is a sixteen-year-old girl who mysteriously dies, leaving her family is distress. The story is written to demonstrate how Lydia's death slowly increases the tension for each member of her household, while also occasionally flashing back to when Lydia was alive. These scenes serve to show how troubled Lydia was, as her mother pushed her to succeed in school (with Lydia becoming devastatingly discouraged about physics) and her father pushed her to become popular and have many friends (Lydia was often alone). The whole thing is particularly tragic because it feels disturbingly real. The conflicts in this story definitely happen in real life, and it is painfully easy to identify with at least one member of Lydia's family. It's almost scary.
The other members have their own problems as well. To avoid going into too much detail, Lydia's father sometimes thinks of how he was discriminated as a child and how he didn't have friends. Her mother wanted to be more than simply in the kitchen, but ended up raising a family instead, which is why she pressures Lydia to take up a science field. Lydia's brother Nath has trouble getting his dad's respect, and ends up getting into Harvard as an attempt to prove himself. And Lydia's sister Hannah, being the youngest, is commonly ignored by everyone else. Everything in this novel is portrayed realistically, and none of it seems off base at any time.
My rating? Easy. 5 (maybe 4.8) stars out of 5. It truly is a powerful story.
