Review: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
This book is perfectly written.
I read Everything I Never Told You years ago, and I adored it. I had been so excited for the release of this book, but I put off actually reading it because I was worried I wouldn't love it as much as I loved her first. I ow wish I had read this years ago, but I am so happy I finally read it.
Little Fires Everywhere largely follows two families, the Warrens and the Richardsons. The Warrens are Mia, an artist, and her teenage daughter Pearl; the pair have been nomadic Pearl's whole life, and the Richardsons are a married couple with stable careers and four teenage children. Mrs. Richardson ends up being Mia's landlady, and the lives of the two families become more and more interconnected. The book begins with the Richardson house having just been burnt down; we jump backward in time to the Warrens arriving in Shaker Heights, the town the Richardsons are rooted in.
This book has intriguing plot developments throughout, it has surprises and threads I was so excited to follow, but it truly shines in the character development. Each prominent character in the book has some sections of this story that zoom in closely on their thoughts and their past, allowing the reader to both understand that character more deeply and to begin to put the puzzle pieces of the plot together. It is absolutely gorgeously written.
The tension building in this book really comes to a head around a legal dispute between a Chinese mother who left her baby at a fire station when she was no longer physically and financially able to care for her baby and the white family who had been fostering the baby and are trying to adopt her. Mia and her daughter Pearl are on the side of the birth mother, Bebe, and the Richardson parents and some of their children are on the side of the couple trying to adopt. This conflict begins the process of bringing to light secrets and lies that have been hiding just under the surface.
This book is focused a lot on class, race, family, motherhood, lies, and secrets. If any of these themes are of interest to you, I would absolutely recommend reading this book. I particularly like the way Ng laid out contradictions in the way some of the people thought around some of these topics. You see Mrs. Richardson being proud of and interested in her own roots while completely dismissing people who envoke this as a reason that Bebe should be given custody of her daughter back. She thinks that Mia should pay more attention to her own daughter while actively isolating one of her own children. The dynamic between Mia and Mrs. Richardson was really one of the most interesting aspects of this novel, especially with how this is played out through each of their children.
Ng's writing is truly superb. I underlined so many passages and lines while I was reading this book. She writes so beautifully while also being very succinct with her prose. It is so technically impressive and emotionally evocative. I loved the gestures she chose to highlight, the calm woman thwarted stabbing a green bean or the enraged teenager biting their own cheek to keep in check.
I really loved the way she wrote families. You could absolutely see the places where characters grew together in the same place but became wildly different. How someone's steadiness came out of fear or two characters with very similar upbringings reacted radically different. The way the same person can understand some of their children so well and some of their children not at all. Just the way Ng writes different dynamics within these two families was so intriguing. I was absolutely glued to this book.
I am so glad I finally read this book; I really need to do a better job prioritizing reading books I really want to read because when I actually read them, I adore them. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who likes character-driven high, tension fiction. This was fantastic.
