Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng, Penguin Press 2017
The power of Celeste Ng’s novel is the friction caused by repression: of secrets, unfulfilled desires and unrealized dreams, and the fires, both literally and metaphorically, that ignite when the pressure to repress overwhelms. The story Ng has created from the flames is both tragic and beautiful.
She captures the essence of the late 90s pre-9/11 American culture in pitch-perfect form. The novel will resonate deeply with readers who came of age in the decade. The mindset, both culturally and personally, is hauntingly retrospective of a long-gone era, made to seem much further away by the turbulent decades that followed.
From a more intimate perspective, Ng is a master of animating dynamic characters who despite (sometimes egregious) flaws, compel the reader to at the least empathize, but with the full potential to fall in love with. The core catalyst, the Richardson family, is at the surface the Good Housekeeping version of the American Dream, with the exception of the eccentric youngest daughter Izzy. Only with the enigmatic artist Mia and sweet-natured but naïve daughter Pearl move into the Richardson’s rental home is the collective vale dropped. The ensuing immersion of the two families dissolves the opaque charades both have been hiding behind for years. With each page the heartbreak and fear that lies beneath gains clarity; the reader shares in the communion of prevailing emotions.
In the end, Little Fires Everywhere is an unsettling novel. Fire is, regardless of size and duration, an unsettling force. But that isn’t to say the glow can’t be illuminating, if not beautiful.