Everything I Never Told You

Downstairs, she stops in the doorway of the kitchen, a hand on each side of the frame. Her silence says everything. I ll check outside, she says at last. Maybe for some reason She keeps her gaze trained on the floor as she heads for the front door, as if Lydia s footprints might be crushed into the hall runner.

Nath says to Hannah, She was in her room last night. I heard her radio playing. At eleven thirty. He stops, remembering that he had not said goodnight.

Can you be kidnapped if you re sixteen? Hannah asks. Nath prods at his bowl with a spoon. Cornflakes wilt and sink into clouded milk.

Their mother steps back into the kitchen, and for one glorious fraction of a second Nath sighs with relief: there she is, Lydia, safe and sound. It happens sometimes their faces are so alike you d see one in the corner of your eye and mistake her for the other: the same elfish chin and high cheekbones and left-cheek dimple, the same thin-shouldered build. Only the hair color is different, Lydia s ink-black instead of their mother s honey-blond. He and Hannah take after their father once a woman stopped the two of them in the grocery store and asked, Chinese? and when they said yes, not wanting to get into halves and wholes, she d nodded sagely. I knew it, she said. By the eyes. She d tugged the corner of each eye outward with a fingertip. But Lydia, defying genetics, somehow has her mother s blue eyes, and they know this is one more reason she is their mother s favorite. And their father s, too.

Then Lydia raises one hand to her brow and becomes his mother again.

The car s still here, she says, but Nath had known it would be. Lydia can t drive; she doesn t even have a learner s permit yet. Last week she d surprised them all by failing the exam, and their fa

mystery behind Lydia s death and boy does it deliver, on every front. Huffington Post

A subtle meditation on gender, race and the weight of one generation s unfulfilled ambitions upon the shoulders and in the heads of the next . . . Ng deftly and convincingly illustrates the degree to which some miscommunications can never quite be rectified. San Francisco Chronicle

Cleverly crafted, emotionally perceptive . . . Ng sensitively dramatizes issues of gender and race that lie at the heart of the story . . . Ng s themes of assimilation are themselves deftly interlaced into a taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense. O, The Oprah Magazine

Ng moves gracefully back and forth in time, into the aftermath of the tragedy as well as the distant past, and into the consciousness of each member of the family, creating a series of mysteries and revelations that lead back to the original question: what happened to Lydia? . . . Ng is masterful in her use of the omniscient narrator, achieving both a historical distance and visceral intimacy with each character s struggles and failures . . . On the surface, Ng s storylines are nothing new. There is a mysterious death, a family pulled apart by misunderstanding and grief, a struggle to fit into the norms of society, yet in the weaving of these threads she creates a work of ambitious complexity. In the end, this novel movingly portrays the burden of difference at a time when difference had no cultural value . . . Compelling. Los Angeles Review of Books

The mysterious circumstances of 16-year-old Lydia Lee s tragic death have her loved ones wondering how, exactly, she spent her free time. This ghostly debut novel calls to mind The Lovely Bones. Marie Claire

The first chapter of Celeste Ng s debut novel is difficult the oldest daughter in a family is dead but what follows is a brilliantly written, surprisingly uplifting exploration of striving in the face of alienation and of the secrets we keep from others. This could be my favorite novel of the year. Chris Schluep, Parade

The emotional core of Celeste Ng s debut is what sets it apart. The different ways in which the Lee family handles Lydia s death create internal friction, and most impressive is the way Ng handles racial politics. With a deft hand, she loads and unpacks the implications of being the only Chinese American family in a small town in Ohio. Kevin Nguyen, Grantland

Beautiful and poignant . . . deftly drawn . . . . It s hard to believe that this is a debut novel for Celeste Ng. She tackles the themes of family dynamics, gender and racial stereotyping, and the weight of expectations, all with insight made more powerful through understatement. She has an exact, sophisticated touch with her prose. The sentences are straightforward. She evokes emotions through devastatingly detailed observations. Cleveland Plain-Dealer

Perceptive . . . a skillful and moving portrayal of a family in pain . . . It is to Ng s credit that it is sometimes difficult for the reader to keep going; the pain and unhappiness is palpable. But it is true to the Lees, and Ng tells all. Minneapolis Star Tribune

Impressive . . . In its evocation of a time and place and society largely gone but hardly forgotten, Everything I Never Told You tells much that today s reader should learn, ponder and appreciate. St. Louis Post-Dispatch