How well do you know your family members? In All the Things I Never Told You, the consequences of misunderstanding turn tragic when the oldest daughter of the Lee family drowns in a nearby lake. Celeste Ng weaves the past and present together in this moving and insightful novel about a multiracial Chinese-American family in Ohio.
The novel begins and ends with the death of Lydia Lee. Throughout the story, Ng moves back and forth between the past events that lead up to Lydia’s death and the present actions that each family member takes in response to losing Lydia. There are five main characters: Marilyn Lee, the mother, James Lee, the father, Nath Lee, the son, Lydia Lee, the oldest daughter, and Hannah Lee, the youngest daughter. Celeste Ng fleshes out each of the Lees skillfully. I felt that she fully embraced “show, don’t tell”, a mantra I often heard repeated in Creative Writing class. Here is an example of a passage that brought me to tears:
Hannah, her small heart awash in pity, reaches up to take her hand, but her mother doesn’t notice. In a moment Hannah contents herself by clasping her own fingers behind her back.
All the Things I Never Told You is about how people often fail at guessing other people’s thoughts and motivations. This happens a lot in interactions between the Lees. When Marilyn abandons the family for a short time, James believes that she is unhappy because she married a Chinese-American, but she is really unhappy because she wants to be a doctor, not a housewife. Ng also expresses her theme in how other people treat the Lees. Marilyn faces prejudice as the only female student taking premed classes at her college. The male students urinate in her chemistry equipment, and the male professor refuses to do anything about it. James and the children feel a stark sense of isolation at work and school. Adults stare at them in the grocery store. Children make fun of them on the playground. This novel is filled with people who are too busy listening to their own prejudices to hear how other people are hurt by their actions.
Read this book if you:
- are a writer in search of a great example of characterization
- would like to develop better empathy for women, children, parents, and immigrants