Little fires everywhere

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 and have an organized life, you can avoid everything that is unpleasant or disastrous. If you have some experience from life, you know that this not the case. Life is alike a grand and experiment, you add new things and wait to see how it works. It is a fascinating thing, but it is also fragile and unpredictable and you never know what could happen next.

Mrs Richardson’s life turns upside down when she rends a small flat she owns, to an unconventional and magnetic artist and her teenager daughter. It was a spontaneous decision, a decision that will provide the spark that will light a little fire. A little fire causes little damage, but many little fires can be disastrous. In the case of Richardson’s family, the little fires in the title will have both literal and metaphorical sense.

Little Fires Everywhere is a multi-layered story. It looks at what means to be a mother, and how mothers and daughters pair to each other in so many different ways. It examines, class, race, the challenges of inter-racial adoptions, and the scope of one’s identity. Spending most of my life as an outsider, I could identify with Mrs Richardson’s younger daughter, Izzy, a teenager that breaks rules, pushes boundaries and wears her individuality like a shield.

The most interesting characters in the novel are the two mothers, Mrs. Richardson and the unconventional artist, Mia. The way the author refers to them, the first as “Mrs.” rather than Elena, the second always as Mia, her first name, shapes not only their personalities, and their view of things, but also the way we feel about them. Other characters appear to be undeveloped, they reveal very little about their emotions and they lack depth, but the interaction between them is interesting and captivating.

Little Fires Everywhere is an American family drama, it is readable, fast paced, some times funny. It is not a challenging book, but it is a beautiful story that you can visualize in your head, it is like watching a movie.

The “little fires” are a metaphor for the passionate heart that beats inside each of us, and the strength of society’s ultimately foolish desire to control it. It unfolds as a dark-side-of-wealthy-suburbia mystery in an entertaining and surprising way that kept me turning the pages.The trope of dark suburbia may be cliché (“Everything has to be perfect on the outside, no matter what mess lay within...”), the author may beat the reader over the head with the fire metaphor, and the characters may be somewhat predictable (the artsy single mom with a heart of gold, the cold, wealthy couple desperate for a baby, the rebellious teen, etc.), but the adept way the author shifts perspectives among them helps the reader empathize with them and makes for an enjoyable read. This may not be any sort of literary landmark, but it’s an excellent read that I’d recommend to friends who like fiction.

To be totally honest, I wasn’t going to finish this book. I was about 40% of the way through and the author was still setting the scene, not giving too much detail about the characters, and I was getting a little bored. But at the halfway mark—wow, it took off. I got to know each character so intimately and deeply and it truly made me understand the actions and decisions made by them earlier in the book and as I continued reading. Really incredible character development. I don’t finish many books feeling sad that I won’t get to see how the characters progress throughout their lives, but if she made a sequel to this, I would pre-order it in a second.

Aside from the characters, the plot itself is so interesting and unlike other books I’ve read. It really challenges your empathy and shows you that situations can’t always be black and white—that multiple factors need to be considered and there’s never really a “right” answer. Definitely enjoyed the emotional gymnastics it put me through, and I know I’ll be thinking about this (and will likely reread it) for a long time.