Everything I Never Told You

Dave bought Everything I Never Told You for his Kindle months ago so I get to also read it thanks to Amazon's Family Sharing policy which is a great idea. We can use the campsite's wifi at our current CS so I seized the opportunity to download most of the books he has bought that I have not yet read!

Everything I Never Told You is marketed, on its cover at least, as being similar to The Lovely Bones and I think that does this book a disservice. Yes, both are set in the 1970s and the catalyst for both storylines is the death of a girl, but that could apply to dozens of books. Everything I Never Told You is an exploration of family relationships and tensions in a biracial household where two generations of wanting the best for their children has spectacularly backfired.

Marilyn, a white American woman, longed to be a doctor despite her mother's intention that she conform to perfect 1950s housewife ideals. Ng quotes from a vintage Betty Crocker cookbook whose guidelines for a happy home were hilarious until I remembered that they were meant as serious advice to women. Thank goodness the society in which I live now allows women the right to choose or refuse that lifestyle! Marrying a Chinese-American man, James, allows Marilyn to defy her mother, but also ends up with her losing her dreamed-for medical career. Instead, and unable to see the irony, she foists that ideal of perfect happiness onto her eldest daughter, Lydia. Lydia dutifully strives to make herself into the woman Marilyn obsessively pushes her to be, and when her body is discovered drowned in a nearby lake, the loss tears her family apart.

Several issues are carefully and cleverly interwoven to make this an interesting novel to think over and discuss after it is finished. The shocking casual racism is a reminder of how we can still recoil from people who display differences. And James's constant need to fit in clearly illustrates the effect such behaviour has on its victims. Most important though, I think, is the message that our dreams are just that. Ours. And, even with the best of intentions, foisting our own life goals onto others is rarely the best solution for them.

I flew through this! Very readable, but definitely leans literary in terms of the prose and the themes (Asian American experience, gender, generational trauma). My main reason for 4 stars instead of 5 stars was that it felt melodramatic at times. The language surrounding a scene would amp up the intensity so much. I imagine if it were a movie it might be a little overacted and the music really pushing certain emotions on you. I prefer my stories more restrained than that.

I want to call this more a family drama than a thriller, but it has thriller or mystery elements given the death of Lydia (first sentence, not a spoiler). I haven’t read many books like that, but Shelter by Jung Yun comes to mind. I would also compare the structure of this book to Crossroads by Franzen because we are focused on this family and we learn so much about each family member in turn - including all their psychological hang ups. There’s just not a death at the center of Crossroads.

I love how Ng fleshed out each character so fully. I also love how she got you to see certain moments from multiple perspectives, such that you knew the misunderstandings and misinterpretations happening. It was so well done because they were such believable misunderstandings based what the characters think they know about each other. But really they are often projecting.

The scene when Marilyn finds all the diaries was one of the most moving but quiet moments for me.

They will think of her often: .... When, a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn't know this yet, but he senses it deep down in his core. So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.

Oh good heavens, this book is intense. Gut-wrenchingly sad in bits, the book provides a window into the life and history of a family, with the loss of a loved one as the premise. Ng creates a delicately crafted window to peer into their lives, and how each one of them makes sense of it, and how they deal with it. It's a study in loss, grief, and the scars we bear. Age-old scars that become fault-lines, fault-lines that haunt you, stay with you, colour your perception of reality and your interactions with those around you, and threaten to define you. Ng does a wonderful job of exploring the fears and wants of her characters, all embedded within the strange and remarkable dynamic of a family. I absolutely love her prose and how she switches perspectives almost seamlessly. This book will stay with me. For a long, long time.