Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Devastating and eloquent.

Kind of an "ordinary people" story that scratches beneath the surface to show that no one is truly ordinary even though we're all striving to be, even if we call it extra-ordinary. Though I might have wished for a little deeper character development, I truly enjoyed what was here and found myself captivated by the light people (sometimes, finally) manage to find when the world is darkest.

Lydia, the much-favoured middle child of a "mixed" marriage, is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Unsurprisingly, her passing has an overwhelming effect on her family and its dynamics. Ng takes the reader into the heads and memories of the entire Lee family, exposing cracks in the marriage, in its parent/child relationships, and between siblings. Realistically plotted, beautifully written, the book is compulsively readable, and the characters very believable and artfully crafted. I enjoyed this novel quite a bit.

*throaty closed mouth growl*
That’s it; I’m done with this genre of go-nowhere-reveal-nothing kind story that is many contemporary fiction novels.
What was the point of this book? To languish in the complexity of people and their relationships and the things forced upon them by others and society? Is that it? Pass.
Strong starting line that ultimately had no intention of delivering an incredible story after it.
The characters are aberrant and thinly developed.
The writing is the only redeeming part…

Some times life sucks, some times people suck, some times society sucks…and some times the book you choose to read sucks.

Everything I Never Told You is everything I never wanted to waste 10 hours of my life on….

I just finished this! I’m ruined!!!

This book will explore the death of Lydia, a girl in small town Ohio who drowns just before her 16th birthday. Much more of a character study then heavy on plot or mystery. You will come to know the family members, James the father Asian American history teacher at a local college, the mother Marilyn from Virginia, who got pregnant while in college with James while pursuing a medical degree.. and never attaining it, a brother Nath older, and the younger sister Hannah. The author will take you through each character in the past and present to find where Lydia fit in, the repercussions of her death, and possibly clues to what actually happened on the lake when she drowned.

The title sums up the heart of the story. The relationships are defined by secrets and misunderstandings of what little is said or not said.

very interesting. about a family that doesn't "communicate". everyone thinks they know what the other person is thinking.

Everything I Never Told You follows a family after the death of their eldest daughter Lydia. It is a combination slice-of-life of each family member, along with glimpses into their pasts. It shows how the family has related to each other, starting with the parent's relationship, and shows how they each grieve Lydia's death. It also works through how they relate to the world around them, being a mixed-race family.

The ending was what really hit me, as it tied the whole story together in such a nice way. It was a touching novel, and one that a lot of lessons can be drawn from.

I waffled between 3 and 4 stars for a while. I had some anger towards a few of the characters which made me want to give a lower rating but eventually decided that it was a sign of strong writing which deserved the higher rating.

I want to thank Ford, who provided this free audiobook through their GoodReads group.

What sad, misunderstood, hurting characters in this novel. No one talks to each other. They blame their upbringing, culture, parents, Sybil fa for all going wrong in their lives. The one I felt for the most was the youngest child Hannah who everyone forgot lived there, not everyone’s favourite Lydia and the main character in the novel.
Thus novel does highlight how people try to live through their children and how overwhelming this can be.

In the country most proud of its broad mindset, the well-being of its citizens, open-mindedness, and effective communication, it turns out that all these are pending issues, along with a handful more that would contribute to a truly progressive, emotionally healthy, culturally free society... oh right, I think they call that well-being and happiness.

In this novel, NG highlights the backwardness in these behaviors that ancestrally allow illusory feelings that things are fine, or at least that there is someone who is okay with themselves and their surroundings. Although surely there are these "rare birds," they will likely go unnoticed.

Deep-rooted racism, entrenched resentment, violence at the surface, not necessarily physical, revenge always on the verge of exploding, a sum of factors resulting in intolerance, intolerance that bitterly swallows both sides, but with their mouths tightly shut.

Hence the title, everything I didn't tell you, is precisely everything that needs to be told, more for personal necessity and in favor of utopian effective communication (hence the mentions of Dale Carnegie), not in search of acceptance, which is difficult, nor understanding, which is almost impossible, or at least comprehension. This is a Tower of Babel, whose punishment is precisely the light-years of separation that Nath longs for with his dreams of a spatial future. The absence of understanding, even when speaking the same language, denial and rejection of differences through mockery, attack, repression. This is often reflected in an excess of uncomfortable attention, followed by a swift exclusion of the different, as happens with Lydia, James, and Marilyn, the latter due to Proxi.

Factors that little by little, by not being expressed, culminate in the loss of innocence as in Hanna.

The country with the greatest hopes for its future generations is the one that causes the most frustration in them. A mirror of the expectations of ancestors, parents, grandparents, etc. Frustration that leads to failure as a constant, not social or economic. No, the worst, the personal, emotional, and sentimental, the irreparable.

That which looms over people as unavoidable as a "manifest destiny."

That which ends hopes and wishes, turning them into mere statistics.

The disappearance of a teenager from a "mixed" family in the 80s causes distress in the family and community for a single reason: everyone feels guilty for everything they never dared to express, or expressed maliciously and incorrectly. It seems that more than a fundamental loss, it represents truncating their wishes and hopes (at least those of the family); their definitive loss (expressed in the first paragraph, not a spoiler). While everyone seeks to fix that complex shame of being participants through introspection, again, everything that is not said, and the transfer of guilt.

An uncomfortable novel because society is not comfortable for anyone, in any corner of the planet, and it is impossible to avoid seeing oneself reflected, even minimally, even if only in passing. As if one were caught in an act.

Well... no, society is not fair because its members are not; each one looks out for their own interests above any other type of benefit, let’s say the collective.

Nobody in this family ever considers themselves adequate, sufficient, fulfilled, or at least something that resembles it. And much less Lydia, a punching bag for her family, tired of being it, unable to express it. Except in the worst way, the definitive one.

A hypocritical society, a mean society. "Errors do not correct others, that’s how I feel." (Translated from Spanish)

Another family drama for my reading group - SIGH & YAWN.
It wasn't terrible. In fact I found it very easy to read so the writing style is excellent.
But why do I feel I've seen it all before? - even though I don't read this kind of book.
Family pressure, racism, secretive children, repressed women, repressed men - I'm afraid it just bores me silly.

Nothing was wrong with this book, per se, but it didn't make much of an impact. It felt too much like a story I've heard dozens of times, and the writing made it feel distant. While I could understand what the characters were feeling, I couldn't really empathize or really care all that much. However, the world building and themes were quite good. Maybe this is one of those cases where the issue isn't the book but the reader. Which isn't to say that this was by any means bad. Just, not the greatest either.

Character-driven tragedy set in the 1970’s about a dysfunctional mixed-race family whose favored middle daughter dies at age sixteen. The author shifts between the past and present, showing how the parents’ disappointments and insecurities adversely impacted their children. It is not a traditional mystery. We eventually discover why the daughter died, but the primary focus of the novel is on the family dynamics. What is said (and not said) can make a significant difference in how life transpires. Themes include parental pressure, regrets, favoritism, racism, importance of communication, personal identity, and lack of acceptance. It is a sad tale of what not to do as a parent. Recommended to those interested in books about family relationships or character-driven dramas.

I fell in love with this immediately, I truly adored this one.

An amazing story about an interracial (Chinese and Caucasian) family in the 1970's and '80s in a small college town and how the opposing needs to be different and to fit in create the tension and ultimately the tragedy that rips the family apart. It reminded me a lot of my unpublished memoir without the tragic ending....

Well-written but the characters didn't seem quite real. The plot was very reliant on Asian-American prejudice which I realize is real but felt a bit overdone (though obviously Ng knows more about it than I do).

unlikeable parents can sometimes make unlikeable children

The writing style of this author doesn't captivate me. (Translated from Spanish)

An Unexpected Death in an Unexpected Manner

In Celeste Ng’s 2014 debut novel, she proves herself a truly compassionate and empathic observer of human tragedy. Everyone with children young or grown, everyone in a relationship, everyone who has lost someone dear inexplicably, all will identify with the Lee family, and perhaps even have their worst fears stirred up by Ng’s novel, that’s how true it rings. Too, reader’s will find the added pressure of racism haunting the lives of the characters, as it does the lives of many Americans.

The Lee family, professor father James Lee, wannabe doctor wife Marilyn, anxious driven son Nath, lonesome pushed daughter Lydia, and often overlooked youngest Hanna, live in a small college town. James teaches American history at the college, a specialty both a bit tongue in cheek and aspirational, the cowboy. Nath, graduating high school, has his sights set on Harvard (James graduated from there) and outer space. Lydia, unlike Nath, can’t be her own person because Marilyn is molding her to fit into her own long gone aspiration. Hanna, the last born, too young to be a sisterly companion to Lydia, seems overlooked, as her parents focus on her older siblings. When the novel opens, Lydia has been missing and the family is frantic to find her. Unbeknownst to them is her fate, revealed in the very first sentence: “Lydia is dead.”

But why would a young woman who seemed to be successful in school, both academically and socially, take her own life? And did she really kill herself, or did she die at the hands of a nefarious person, as Marilyn insists? Readers will discover that in an ironic way, Marilyn may have been right. Yet, Marilyn, nor anyone else in the Lee family, will get the closure readers will, and that is one aspect of the novel that makes it so unsettling: never knowing why your daughter did what she did.

Ng skillfully peels an onion here, revealing the histories of James, Marilyn, Nath, Lydia, and Hanna slowly, casting back and looking forward, so that in the end we fully understand the relationship of one person to the other.

Like much in life, at a distance the Lee family strikes observers as ideal. Yet, as readers learn, James struggled with race his entire life, successful, yes, but not nearly as successful as he might have been, and always trying to keep a low profile, to blend in.

If it’s true opposites attract, then at their cores, James and Marilyn are like the opposing poles of a magnet. She wants to break the mold, still a very tight one in the 1970s, the time of the novel, and become a doctor, to do big things. She nearly does, until she falls in love with James and children follow.

Lydia, then, bears the brunt of Marilyn’s thwarted ambition, as well as her father’s craving for acceptance in a white world, and these crush her. Nath, less subject to Marilyn’s desire, but in conflict with James, finds escape in physics and the stars and pursues his ambition relentlessly, as much to fulfill it as to escape home. And Hanna is left to wonder where she fits in.

All the Lees have secrets they hold close to themselves, and in the case of Lydia, all the way to the end of her short life. It adds up to a real, modern American tragedy.

Super slow book for me. I think the story introduces some important ideas, but I just didn't connect with the characters or the plot.

The story is about a Chinese American family living in a small town in Ohio in the 1970's. Marilyn, the mother, is determined that their oldest daughter, Lydia will become a doctor. When 16 year old Lydia is found drowned in the local lake, each family member deals with heh death differently. The balance of the family is upset. Marilyn cannot accept suicide. Nath, the brother, is certain Lydia was killed. There are many secrets revealed, Issues like prejudice, sibling rivalry, cultural conflict, and marriage are dealt with in a masterful way.

What a family. What writing

The flow of this author's words was so engaging. I felt as though I knew each member of the family in this story. The sadness and despair that each felt was so palpable. The message leads readers to wonder why it is so difficult to say what we really mean to those we know best.

That ending. I don’t know what else to say I am just...that ending. I feel like it’s missing something even though the rest of the book was amazing. It’s so easy to feel for these characters, so easy to feel their pain and happiness. Celeste Ng does a great job really connecting the reader with the characters. I know that she has some short stories, but I really do look forward to her next book, as I have really enjoyed this one and “Little Fires Everywhere”.

The ultimate what's under the surface isn't what you see.

When death happens to someone young, there's always the inevitable set of questions: "How could this happen?" "Why did this happen?" and down the line. Celeste Ng deftly manages these questions as she makes and unmakes a family portrait in this novel.

Lydia's story is poignant and painfully sad. The racial elements that come into play are interesting to study, yet the story is filled with a little too much melodrama that unbalances the story and makes you veer out of it. It's also a bit uneven in pace--it wants to follow in the steps of a Gillian Flynn or a Megan Abbott and is just not quite there yet. Nevertheless, it's worth the read, and it moves quickly.

This book was heavy with missed opportunities and misunderstandings. Imagine being born on the cusp of acceptability: of women achieving career goals and not having to quit pursuits when pregnant, of mixed-race marriages, of being open about sexual preference. All these undercurrents drive this book while the main plot on the surface stirs them into a tempest. It is the late 1950s and Marilyn is a bright, studious young woman at Radcliffe, determined to be a doctor, despite her mother's pressure to be a wife and homemaker. When she meets James Lee, a Chinese-American professor and falls in love, she initially believes he understands her goals, but when she becomes pregnant, they marry and she quickly falls into a traditional role. He is passed over for a professorship at Harvard because of his race, and is able to get a job at a small Ohio college. Soon there are 3 children to look after and Marilyn's hopes for achievement get transferred to her middle daughter, Lydia. All this back story explodes to the surface when Lydia is missing one morning and turns up dead in the town lake. It is an apparent suicide -- Lydia could not handle the burden of all the misplaced hopes of her parents. Her older brother Nath is convinced a neighbor boy, Jack is responsible in some way, but Jack had merely befriended her to feel closer to Nath. The loneliness in the story is palpable because each character feels so utterly "other" but is not able to articulate that to anyone. It's a well-written study of the effects of suppression and isolation, despite the ability to interact with others in the conventional expected, accepted ways.

The story opens with the death of teenager Lydia Lee who goes missing and whose body is then found at the bottom of a lake. To make sense of the death, the background story of her parents, a Caucasian mother and Chinese father, is told. Marilyn, her mother, and James, her father, fall in love in the late 1950s when Marilyn is a student at Radcliffe and James is a teaching assistant at Harvard. When Marilyn becomes pregnant, she and James marry which puts her ambition of becoming a doctor on hold. From the start, fitting in as a mixed couple is a struggle. James is a professor and Marilyn a homemaker. When Marilyn decides to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor, she finds that she is once again pregnant with child number three. She then devotes all her time and energy into micromanaging Lydia's life in the hopes that Lydia can fulfill Marilyn's dream of becoming a doctor. Lydia has no friends other than her older brother Nath who will soon be off to Harvard the following year. The only other friend Lydia has is Jack who has the reputation of being a bad boy but who is actually in love with Nath. This is shocking news to Lydia who is already upset that Nath won't be around next year. The police have declared the death a suicide but Nath thinks differently. He confronts Jack thinking that he had something to do with Lydia's death. It was unclear to me whether the death was a suicide (Lydia couldn't swim but rowed a boat out to the middle of a lake) or whether she thought that it would be cathartic to try somehow make her way ashore the way she did when Nate rescued her from a fall in the lake years back.

A sad read about the tragic undoing of a contemporary Chinese-American family who don't get each other. Lives lived and memories surrounding a young woman's death unspool slowly through the eyes of a mother, father, brother and sister. If you like Big Little Lies, pick up this heartbreaking first novel.

God this is a sad piece of work. Sad, but so well written and crafted that it never loses its focus for a second.

It starts with the words: "Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet". It is really one tragedy after another leading up to the main tragedy of Lydia and then there's more tragedy after that.

Could it be any worse? Yes it can, and it is.

This a beautiful book even if the subject matter is dark. There is nothing extra here, no padding, no distraction from the tragedies themselves. I think this is what gives this book its power and presence.