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The surface of tranquility is broken by the discovery of the body of Lydia Lee, their darling 16-year-old daughter, floating facedown in the neighborhood lake one quiet morning.

Everything I Never Told You

Originally Published: 2015

Pages: 297

Available on: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook

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Marilyn and James Lee are a hard-working couple that strive, for individual reasons, for the success of their children. Coming from very different backgrounds, Marilyn and James have their own marital struggles that do not go unnoticed by their three children. Marilyn holds dreams that have gone unachieved over the years and James has faced societal and cultural estrangement all his life due to his Chinese heritage; both adults grapple with unresolved, internal struggles and inevitably displace this self-rooted dissatisfaction onto their children, particularly Lydia. They project their hopes and dreams onto the shoulders of their oldest daughter, everything they wanted for themselves but never achieved. 

The events of the story unfold naturally and full of suspense, as readers come to view the tragic circumstances through Nath’s and Hannah’s eyes, the “unchosen,” but dynamic, siblings of Lydia. Ng allows the omniscient narrator to dip into each family member’s mindset and life, creating alternate lenses for us readers to peer at the same events. Readers are not privy to Lydia’s final moments and the circumstances of her very sudden death until the conclusion of the novel, and up until that point, Celeste Ng holds her readers in a grip of suspense and intrigue. What led to Lydia’s death? Was it the mysterious neighbor boy with a bad reputation that she had been hanging around as of late? Was it her family’s pressure? Was she taken from her family’s home?

Celesta Ng weaves a beautifully tragic, intentional, and subtle story of the past and present, of different perspectives and desires that inevitably clash and cannot be reconciled. Everything I Never Told You is particularly touching as it describes the complexities of family dynamics and relationships, and the importance of communication. Ng artfully integrates the amount of numbing regret, everyday damage, and neglect that can be imparted—both consciously and unconsciously—within a family setting. Her novel circles around the significance of words and actions that go unnoticed, unrecognized, and unsaid between loved ones, and the damage that can inflict. It is what is left missing or neglected, both intentionally and unintentionally, that builds silent and impending.

Ng makes readers think on the words we choose to omit, on words we hurl in anger, on words we throw in disgust, on words whispered with love: 

Words can impact the speaker just as much as the receiver, for they come to make up part of who we are. Words are the bridge between persons. It is what fills the distance between us.

This novel insightfully tackles a family’s lack of understanding. People can live (the semblance of) the same life, live in the same town and the same house, have the same parents or the same children; but what they experience and how they receive information will be different. Life is up to each person’s interpretation. One person looks at something and sees it one way, another person will look at the same thing and see it another. 

This above quote hits anyone who has tried to escape their past without fully dealing with it. They mistakenly think they can escape their past hurts by just leaving, without realizing that what is actually hurting will come with them. Damaged feelings are not just attached to the person who inflicted the hurt on you; it is a part of you, especially when it comes to family, Ng muses. It is where you came from, it is where you began your life, and as much as you try to leave it, it never will leave you. It comes back to haunt, as it did to nearly every character in the novel.

This coming of age novel describes the necessity for balance between the past and the future. The novel houses characters that fall into two very different traps: those that dwell and drown in the past, refusing to move forward and sabotaging their present and future, or those that blindly ignore the past, refusing to learn from what they have experienced. This book shows clearly that neither is a healthy relationship with time. There is no present if you don’t live it, if you don’t consciously choose to have one. It will not exist.

You will enjoy this title if you enjoy the mystery genre and coming-of-age stories, such as Where The Crawdad Sings by Delia Owens. Everything I Never Told You won Amazon book of the year in 2014 and also was on the New York Times bestseller. If you enjoy this novel, try Celeste Ng’s other celebrated book, Little Fires Everywhere.