Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You has been on my "to read" list for quite some time.  Looks like it was first checked out in 2014, so many of you may have already read it.  If so, what did you think?

Ng tells the story of the disppearance and death of Lydia Lee in the 1970s.  Lydia is the teenaged daughter of James and Marilyn Lee.  Lydia has two siblings, Hannah and Nath.  Ng tells how each family member tries to put together what happened to Lydia, learning that there are so many more pieces to this puzzle than only the events of the night she disappeared.   They have a shared grief although also have an unwritten, and unfortunate, rule of not talking about this grief so that each family member is left to grieve alone.  Ng also describes how this tradegy casts a shadow over everything, making things that at one time held a bright spot in their lives now become something they avoid all together. 

There were a few chapters early on that reverted to telling about James and Marilyn's childhoods, James an Asian American and Marilyn a White American. At first, I was not sure how this fit into the book.  As I read, it became so much more clear.  James and Marilyn both grew up fighting stereotypes and misguided beliefs.  James was treated differently because of the color of his skin, the shape of his eyes, his heritage, his perceived differentness from other kids.  He desperately wanted for his children to be treated as equals, to be valued for being themselves, to "fit in."  Marilyn grew up at a time when, often, the expectation for a woman was to be a housewife. She wanted to pursue academics and medicine but found herself following the "expected" path without even knowing it.   Wishing she could have followed the academic path, she instead focused on academics for Lydia, often making this the main conversation topic.

As I read, I was struck by the idea of children's resilience.    I truly believe that children have amazing abilities to be resilient and am in awe at that. However, as I read, I kept thinking to myself there has to be a limit to what we ask children to endure, to experience and yet expect them to come out unscathed.  I wonder, if something would have changed in James or Marilyn's paths, or even Lydia's path throughout her childhood, would these events have unfurled differently, or maybe not even happened at all?  As I thought about the idea of trauma and resilience, it makes me think of today.  Children are experiencing loss because of the global pandemic.  Have we checked in with the children we are close to, asked how they are coping with these losses or any other souces of trauma in their lives?  I hope I already am but will make a more concious effort to do this.

Ng describes a web of secrecy.  I didn't feel like it was all intentional secrecy.  I felt that for Lydia, it may have been more of a sense of drifting.  Was she really given a chance to follow her own path?  Was it more compliance or living up to someone else's expectation than secrecy?  Even Marilyn seemed to have experienced a feeling of being cornered, almost where blinders were put up for her to see any other way to reclaim her self at a time she felt lost, or to reclaim her daughter, who was now lost forever. 

I enjoyed this book and it truly got me thinking about how we encourage children without placing expectations on them that lead to a heavy burden their shoulders aren't big enough to carry.   I felt that this author gave a closure to the story.  We find out what really happened to Lydia and how the family starts to put one foot in front of the other again.  

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