Book Of The Month: Little Fires Everywhere
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Every once in a while you’ll come across a book that makes your head spin a bit upon its completion. Written by Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere is the kind of book you set down afterwards and pause—your perspective feeling shifted. This novel carries many unassuming characteristics and is placed in an equally unassuming setting, but still delivers a surprisingly powerful story.
Little Fires Everywhere
Originally Published: 2017
Pages: 338
Available on: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook
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Set in an innocuous neighborhood called Shaker Heights in Cleveland, Ohio, Little Fires Everywhere features the division of the town over a court case, where a well-to-do Cleveland couple and a young mother fight for custody over a Chinese-American baby. Everyone in Cleveland has an opinion and an emotional stake in this case, including two small families whose own stories and lives become tied to the significance of this court decision.
““In Shaker Heights there was a plan for everything.””
The Richardsons and the Warrens are two completely different families. Elena and Bill Richardson have done everything “right.” They went to good colleges, worked their way up in business, found financial comfort, and own a great house in a nice neighborhood. They have successfully pursued traditional paths in life, sought little out of the ordinary, and like to be involved with—and give back to—their community. Elena Richardson believes in the power and righteousness of following the rules, and does her best to instill this in her four young children.
““Rules existed for a reason: if you followed them, you would succeed; if you didn’t, you might burn the world to the ground.””
Mia Warren is a nomadic photographer, moving frequently with her daughter, Pearl. She promises to be a quiet and respectful tenant in the Richardson’s rental property (albeit her quirky ways and mysterious past, Elena Richardson grants, at first). As it turns out, the arrival of the Warrens into Shaker Heights changes the Richardsons’ lives forever.
Pearl Warren and the four Richardson children quickly become close and begin to face moral dilemmas of their own. As their children become better friends, and as the case goes further along in court, Mia and Elena’s conflicting viewpoints come to more of a head. Personally affronted by Mia’s untraditional perspective and lifestyle, Elena becomes determined to unearth Mia’s shadowy past. What she finds is a story that threatens to dismantle her lifelong beliefs.
““It bothers you, doesn’t it?” Mia said suddenly. “I think you can’t imagine. Why anyone would choose a different life from the one you’ve got. Why anyone might want something other than a big house with a big lawn, a fancy car, a job in an office. Why anyone would choose anything different than what you’d choose.””
Celeste Ng is determined to challenge pre-existing expectations in her book, Little Fires Everywhere—ideas about race, motherhood, rules, and societal expectations. In a quiet location like Cleveland, the complications of conflicting moral standpoints are brought more into the open. Because there is so much black-and-white rule-following in the community of Shaker Heights, the morally-gray area presented by the court case over the custody of the baby opens a great void in the town and amongst the families.
““One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules... was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.””
Ng is also determined to start little fires everywhere in the minds of her readers, challenging readers to consider multiple perspectives at once and understand the entire picture before making a judgment on a situation or character. She dwells on the possibility that there is more gray area when it comes to making the right decision than most people account for; that following a rule does not necessarily equate to doing good.
““Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow.””
Throughout Little Fires Everywhere, she examines the dual nature of rules: how they exist to provide a moral construct and a clear division between right and wrong, but cannot at their core inherently do this.
Ng carefully—but bravely—spearheads issues like abortion and racism, artfully constructing multiple perspectives over the same issues and showing us that a character’s perspective transforms after having undergone a personal experience. Through a lack of humility and understanding, people make judgements continually without fully understanding. There are two sides to everything—and don’t forget all the undefined space between A and B.
““To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all at the same time.””
In this story, Ng also brings the intricacies of female relationships—especially that of mother and daughter—to the forefront, leaving male characters as back-up support. She takes the opportunity to examine the complicated role of motherhood—the sacrifice called upon day after day, the struggle to always place their child’s needs before their own, the hurt a child will inevitably put their mother through as they grow, the struggle to understand their child’s real wants and needs, and the lingering insecurities and silent battles that they as individual women manage internally out of eyesight of their children.
Celeste Ng showcases an intimate portrayal of motherhood and the secret wars they wage inside as they fight for what is best for their children.
““What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?””
If you enjoy this book, you should give her other books Our Missing Hearts and Everything I Never Told You a try. While Little Fires Everywhere is a fictional story, Celeste Ng actually grew up in the town of Shakers Heights outside of Cleveland.
To see our review of Ng’s equally-fantastic novel Everything I Never Told You, read here.