A review by lauraleafromthelibrary
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

dark reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

3 ⭐️
  • Chapter One: 
    • Present time: set in 1977.
    • Lydia is found drowned.

  • Chapter Two:
    • We jump to the past; 1950s
    • Marilyn (the mother) falling for the professor James (the father); 1957.
    • Their complex relationship.
  • Page 48: “He was afraid to tell Marilyn these things, afraid that once he admitted them, she would see him as he had always seen himself: a scrawny outcast, feeding on scraps, reciting his lines and trying to pass. An imposter. He was afraid she would never see him any other way.”
    • Being from an immigrant family; the outsider. His parents both dead.
    • The Marilyn’s mother is so racist, she never sees her again after her wedding day.

  • Chapter Three:
    • The funeral for Lydia.
    • James sleeps with Louisa, his graduate assistant. 😔

  • Chapter Four:
    • He tells Marilyn no to going back to work; she misses using her degree — major red flag. 🚩 
    • Marilyn’s mother dies in 1966; changes her whole perspective on life.
      • That Betty Crocker cookbook man. 🤬
    • Page 85-86: “It struck her then, as if someone had said it aloud: her mother was dead, and the only thing worth remembering about her, in the end, was that she had cooked. Marilyn thought uneasily of her own life, of hours spent making breakfasts, serving dinners, packing lunches into neat paper bags. How was it possible to spend so many hours spreading peanut butter across bread? How was it possible to spend so many hours cooking eggs? Sunny-side up for James. Hard-boiled for Nath. Scrambled for Lydia. It behooves a good wife to know how to make an egg behave in six basic ways. Was she sad? Yes. She was sad. About the eggs. About everything.” 
      • Page 86: “Never, she promised herself. I will never end up like that.”
    • Marilyn leaves.

  • Chapter Five:
    • Page 120: “She drops both, as if she has found a snake, and pushes the book bag out of her lap with a thud. They must belong to someone else, she thinks; they could not be Lydia’s. Her Lydia did not smoke. As for the condoms —“
      • I guess parents will remain naive forever. Every generation.
      • Her Lydia — like she ever asked her daughter how she really felt. I think the ily’s are genuine but she lives her own life too.

  • Chapter Six:
    • Page 136-137: “What mother doesn’t love to cook with her little girl? And what little girl doesn’t love learning with Mom?” 😳
      • Sadness + grief + horror wrapped into one.
    • Page 137: “If her mother ever came home and told her to finish her milk, she thought, the page wavering to a blur, she would finish her milk. She would brush her teeth without being asked and stop crying when the doctor gave her shots. She would go to sleep the second her mother turned out the light. She would never get sick again. She would do everything her mother told her. Everything her mother wanted.”
      • Parents fuck up their kids so hard. This is why some people should not have kids.
    • Marilyn becomes pregnant with Hannah; that’s why she gives up her dream.
    • Page 147: “She buried her nose in Lydia’s hair and made silent promises. Never to tell her to sit up straight, to find a husband, to keep a house. Never to suggest that there were jobs or lives or worlds not meant for her; never to let her hear doctor and think only man. To encourage her, for the rest of her life, to do more than her mother had.”
      • Her endeavour becomes obsession.
      • She pins all her hopes and dreams on her daughter instead of herself.
      • She completely ignores Nath.
        • He pushes Lydia into the water.
    • James becomes more and more abusive to Nath; not physically but verbally + mentally. It’s disgusting.

  • Chapter Seven:
    • 1976; we learn Lydia is friendless, isolated, failing her classes; Nath is her only true saving grace.
    • Th centre of her parents universe for all the wrong reasons.
    • Lydia finds solace in Jack.

  • Chapter Eight:
    • The police rule Lydia’s death a suicide; page 201: “They don’t know her. Someone must have taken her out there. Lured her. She wouldn’t have gone out there by herself. Do you think I don’t know my own daughter?” 
      • Yes, yes I do.
    • The sentence Children of Mixed Backgrounds Often Struggle to Find Their Place — I think in this case, the parents were the real problem; Lydia would have grown up much different if her life didn’t revolve around her parents wants + dreams.
    • OMG — Jack is gay; page 211: “But the moment flashed lightening-bright to Hannah. Years of yearning had made her sensitive, the way a starving dog twitches its nostrils at the faintest scent of food. She could not mistake it. She recognized it at once: love, one-way deep adoration that bounced off and did not bounce back; careful, quiet love that didn’t care and went on anyway.” 😳

  • Chapter Nine:
    • Page 219-220: “When she had her license, Lydia thought, she could go anywhere. She could drive across town, across Ohio, all the way to California, if she wanted to. Even with Nath gone — her mind shied from the thought — she would not be trapped alone with her parents; she could escape anytime she chose. Just thinking about it made her legs twitch, as if itching to run.”
      • Tell me her life isn’t a prison?
    • Her parents gaslighting her: “After you get your license,” her father said, “we’ll let you take the car out on Friday nights with your friends.” “If you keep your grades up,” her mother would add, if she was around.
      • I want to take people hostage. 🤬
    • This got me thinking too; page 225: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. One went up and the other went down. One gained and the other lost. One escaped, the other was trapped, forever.”
      • This idea could really sum up the entire novel.
    • James is always concerned with what everyone else wants, what everyone thinks.
      • He tells Lydia friendship + love are more important than school; having friends is the most important. Again, his traumatic childhood is being suffocated onto her.
    • On Lydia’s 16th birthday, she realizes her father is cheating with Louisa — or the suspicion of.

  • Chapter Ten:
    • Marilyn — she had longed for different: in her life, in herself.
      • James can’t comprehend how wrong he was; she wanted to embrace being different, she wanted things for her life; James wanted to be anything BUT different.

  • Chapter Eleven:
    • Page 260: “Every time you look at this, she heard her father say, just remember what really matters. Being sociable. Being popular. Blending in. You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.”
      • Lydia’s response to Hannah wearing the necklace: rips it off; “You don’t want that” — “Don’t ever smile if you don’t want to.”

  • Chapter Twelve:
    • Page 290: “He can guess, but he won’t ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she’d never told him. Whether she thought he’d failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.” 💔
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