Little Fires Everywhere

A Novel

paperback, 432 pages

Published March 17, 2020 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:
978-0-14-313566-1
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4 stars (92 reviews)

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15 editions

Exhausting Descriptions

3 stars

The overall plot was very engaging and there are fantastic conflicts, even B and C line drama is captivating. However, I find the “big issue” introduced at the beginning of the story to be lackluster, there’s no real conclusion to anything (everything that was built was for nothing), and the third person omniscient narrator takes their job way too seriously. There are pages and pages and pages of unnecessary descriptions that were tedious to get through. I love information in books, I like learning things about characters, I love the big reveals, but these were so frequent and drawn out that I got bored in many places of the book.

Burning questions about motherhood

No rating

Exquisitely crafted tale that starts as dozens of smoldering embers that find enough oxygen to become a full on conflagration that burn to the nearly infinite possibilities of motherhood into the reader’s heart. I loved almost everything about this book, except Mrs Richardson, whose almost villainous role felt at time overly moralistic and flat. Highly recommend!

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Exceptional character portraits and an author who truly treats each character with grace and compassion. If you're going to be a fictional character--try to get into a Celeste Ng book!

Lots of nuance of the question of motherhood. And the author doesn't offer a simplistic answer. This book prompts self-reflection in a very kind, gentle way.

I loved the way that one adult's simple question to a young person changes the trajectory of her life. Small things matter. Not all of them, But some of them matter very much.

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I decided to read this book after it was recommended to me by a few of my high school students. I began watching the Hulu series after finishing the book. Just as a general FYI, the Hulu series takes so many liberties with Ng's story that it is almost an entirely different narrative.

At the core of this book are two characters—Elena and Mia—who represent two different worldviews about what constitutes the "good life." Elena is the obsessively organized, upper-class woman who believes in behaving morally (or following the rules) primarily out of fear of being punished. In this case, the punishment would be making the "wrong choices" that would lead to an undesirable socioeconomic livelihood. That she follows the rules for fear of being punished is a key distinction, because Elena is the type of person who will maintain the appearance of being a "good person" and "doing the …

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

 [a:Celeste Ng|164692|Celeste Ng|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1404857644p2/164692.jpg]'s [b:Little Fires Everywhere|34273236|Little Fires Everywhere|Celeste Ng|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1522684533l/34273236.SY75.jpg|52959357] is the most fun I've had reading in ages. I'd feared it was going to one of those books about an Asian American struggling to find his or her place in America, difficulties with traditionally minded parents and all that. There's nothing wrong with such books, but I've read enough of them and I was glad to find that this wasn't another.
 Ng writes about teenagers and women well. The adult male characters are a little thin, but given that they're usually absent from the home scene due to work, it's understandable.
 Ng's prose is fluid and a pleasure to read, though at times sounds a little old fashioned to me, with phrases like "before her very eyes." The only tiny error I found was a description of someone looking at a photograph closely, "as if he might find …

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A great slow burn, the structure keeps you interested all throughout the character development and lets the final act hit the way it should. Would like a bit more "show" than "tell" about the rule-based nature of Shaker Heights, but it also seems like it would have been harder to integrate without side-tracking the main story.

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I find this book likable despite the fact that I see most of the characters as very much one-dimensional characters and the dynamics being simplistic and lacking most of real-life nuance and complexities. You get the whole gamut of cardboard cutout figures (ranging from a penniless immigrant who has your sympathies despite bad decisions they have made in life to a very well to do family member who has a sense of privilege the size of the Solar System). Most developments are very predictable precisely due to characters being so shallow.

Still, the book reads nicely and it made me feel somewhat elegiac despite it shortcomings. I'm glad I did read it.

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I don't know why I checked out this book. I had seen it on several "best of" lists, and I needed to pick something quickly for my ride to work...but this is not a book I would normally check out. The whole "suburban family life turned upside down by the arrival of an unconventional person" cliche does not appeal to me.

However, that's not what this story was about...not totally. Or maybe it is...I don't know. All I know is that it sucked me in and I'm still trying to figure out why. I've read some great books with superb writing and character development, but it has been a long time since I have been sitting in my car not wanting to get out so I can listen for just a few minutes more. I guess maybe because the story is so unexpected - I thought it was going to …

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars


Mothers and daughters and their interactions. All sorts of mothers - biological, adoptive, and virtual. There are men and boys in the book as well, but they are mainly placeholders. The novel is really all about the women and girls.

The novel is set in Shaker Heights, Ohio (where Ng grew up, although she was born in Pittsburgh) in the 90's. Ng is of the generation of the teenagers in the book, while I would be the same age as the mothers.

Mrs Richardson seems at first to be Lady Bountiful, distributing largess to the deserving needy, but is gradually revealed to be the Witch Mother from Hell, secure in her own knowledge of what is right and proper and manipulating and controlling everyone around her. Mia on the other hand, is a Wise Woman, a nomadic artist, poor and rootless, but with the gift of seeing the deep inner …

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

3.5 stars

At the beginning of the 20th century, two railroad moguls and land speculators , the Van Sweringen brothers, decided to create a utopian community, a retreat from the industrial inner-city of Cleveland, Ohio. Shaker Heights was a one of the first planned communities in the the United States and it has become known for its restrictions upon the use of the land and the stringent building guidelines that became known as the Shacker Standards. Shacker Heights likes order and rules and prides itself to be idyllic, progressive, and racially integrated. Its official motto is, “Some communities just happen; the best are planned.” It is also Celeste Ng’s hometown.

It is 1997, and in Shaker Heights lives a family that embodies all these ideals. Mrs Richardson is the matriarch of the Richardson family. She desires a stable, orderly world; she believes that as long as you follow the rules …

Review of 'Little Fires Everywhere' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I can see why this book made so many of 2017's "best of" lists. It's hard to describe what makes it so engaging. It could be the characters, which are nuanced enough and three-dimensional that you feel like you know them. It could be the skill with which she lays out the three main plot lines then skillfully weaves them together with just enough foreshadowing to reward attentive readers with a sense of where things are going. It could be that she somehow manages to write a book that touches on family, race, death, adoption, abortion, sex, art, identity, independence - without it feeling either melodramatic or heavy. I'd rate it a 4.5 - but since that's not an option, I'm rounding up to 5.

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