In Celeste Ng's "Everything I Never Told You," Marilyn and James Lee have high hopes for their daughter Lydia's future. From a young age, Marilyn constantly immerses her daughter in all things science and math, wishing for her daughter to become a doctor instead of a homemaker like her. James pushes Lydia to make friends and to have a busier social life than he definitely ever had. With their constant focus on Lydia, the two often forget about their other two children, Nathan and Hannah. Nathan, the oldest, prepares to go to Harvard, simply another accomplishment that lies in the shadows of Lydia's own achievements. Hannah, the youngest Lee, finds solace hiding under the kitchen table and not being the center of attention. Despite being constantly forgotten about, Hannah certainly never forgets anything anyone says. While the Chinese-American family may not have the strongest family dynamic, one thing is for certain: Lydia is the glue that holds them all together. But when Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the family loses its already fragile structure and struggles not only to come to terms with Lydia's death, but with one another.
"Everything I Never Told You" takes readers back to 1970s small-town Ohio, where diversity does not fit into the status quo. The Lees stand out as the only mixed-race family, Marilyn being White American and James being Chinese. The novel additionally transitions between the past and the present, giving readers glimpses of Marilyn and James's lives before their marriage, before the birth of their children, and the events leading up to Lydia's death. At the time of their marriage, Marilyn sees no problem in marrying James, despite of her mother's own disapproval. It is not until the couple move to Ohio to start their family that Marilyn sees that other people share the same type of disapproval as her mother. This social and cultural division causes Marilyn to doubt her marriage and she regrets leaving school, having had hopes of becoming a doctor. James has struggled with his ethnicity his entire life. Coming from China, his parents never tried to assimilate into American culture and were upset by their son's rejection of his ethnicity. Like his own children, James was the only Chinese student in school and is later ridiculed in college for studying and teaching American history.
Marilyn and James channel their personal struggles into Lydia, attempting to fulfill their own dreams through their daughter. They have difficulty relating to Nathan, as Marilyn relates more to Lydia as a female and James struggles to have a bond with his son. Nathan is a much stronger individual than James, as he does not let himself become affected by the fact that he is the only Chinese boy in school and the discrimination that comes with it. Marilyn makes Lydia's academia a priority, from reading her science books as bedtimes stories to pushing her to take college-level classes in high school. James tries to make Lydia as social as possible, always offering to take her and her friends to the movies and encouraging his daughter to talk on the phone with her friends as much as she wants. Contrary to her parents' belief, Lydia has difficulty making friends, being one of two Chinese individuals in school and having to spend so much focusing on her schoolwork, thanks to Marilyn. The only friend she seems to make is the neighborhood bad boy, Jack, who Nathan believes played a role in his sister's death.
"Everything I Never Told You" stands out for its diversity and for its portrayal of one family's struggle of trying to understand one another. It is evident through Lydia's death that there is a lot that the Lees do not know a lot about each other, but Ng interweaves the family's past and present to display where their disconnect lies and how they might be able to move on from this tragedy. Ng definitely does not make for a happily-ever after for the Lees, but rather they are able to interpret Lydia's struggle as the family's standout and try to make change in their lives.
"Everything I Never Told You" is Ng's first novel. It is a New York Times Bestseller and was Amazon's #1 Best Book of 2014. It has won multiple awards, including the 2015 Alex Award and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Adult Fiction in 2015. Ng's next novel, "Little Fires Everywhere," will be released in fall 2017 by Penguin Press.
