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4.5 Stars


”Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast.��

This is how the book begins. They hit like a punch, knocking the wind out of you, these first sentences. And yet, while this part of the story runs throughout these pages, each person viewing the circumstances that led to her death in their own, inimitable way, this is the story of the years before, of all that led up to this day for each of the family members, and those whose lives they touch. Each relationship completely different from another, separate, unique.

To her mother, Marilyn - a disappointment to her own mother significant enough for a wedge to form on the day of her wedding, never to speak to one another again - Lydia is her hope that all of her hopes and dreams that didn’t come true will come true in Lydia. She has raised her to want to be what she, herself wanted to become �� a doctor, but never did.

”Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted her to blend in. Because those things had been impossible.��

To her father, James, the son of Chinese immigrants, born in the US, he wanted nothing more than for Lydia - for all his children - to blend in, to not be noticed for their differences, to be accepted. He is a professor of American History at Middlebury College in Ohio.

Nath, the oldest, had always been there for Lydia, in his own way. He resented, but became used to the way his accomplishments were overlooked as his parents shined all their light on Lydia. He loved her, looked out for her, but he was looking forward to college, to getting away from home with no hope of escaping second place, at best.

”Dreaming of his future, he no longer heard all the things she did not say.��

Lydia, the middle child, the one her family had pinned their hopes and dreams on, not that she’d wanted that; not that she hadn’t bent to the point of breaking over the pressure of that expectation. Too afraid to shatter her mother’s hopes and dreams for her, by admitting they were not her own hopes and dreams. And so, in her own way, Lydia, who she really is, how she really feels, shrinks to invisibility, lost to all that her mother wants and needs for her to be.

Hannah was the youngest, an afterthought, perhaps, or really more a delayed surprise, her mother had become so accustomed to life as it was that sometimes she forgot all about Hannah.

�� And what about Hannah? They set up her nursery in the bedroom is the attic, where things that were not wanted were kept, and even when she got older, now and then each of them would forget, fleetingly, that she existed �� as when Marilyn, setting four plates for dinner one night, did not realize her omission until Hannah reached the table. Hannah, as if she understood her place in the cosmos, grew from quiet infant to watchful child: a child fond of nooks and corner, who curled up in closets, behind sofas, under dangling tablecloths, staying out of sight as well as out of mind, to ensure the terrain of the family did not change.��

In some ways, reading this felt almost like reading the personal diaries of this family, these people. Their innermost, unfiltered thoughts, their disappointments, their hurt, their anger, their passion, their hopes and dreams are all opened to view. Ng manages to show you their thoughts and feelings so slowly and delicately revealing each layer as though she’s performing a sacred ritual. Your heart goes out to them, even when they are not all particularly likeable. But the children�� my heart is still breaking.

Recently, I read Ng’s ��Little Fires Everywhere�� which I really enjoyed, but even though the stories are heartbreaking in ��Little Fires Everywhere�� and ��Everything I Never Told You�� there’s a quality that I found in this book that I missed in her newest, a lovely ethereal quality of this story, in the sharing of the thoughts of this family. It reminded me a bit of reading Eliza Henry-Jones ��In the Quiet�� which I also loved.

Recommended!


Many thanks, once again, to the Public Library system for the loan of this book!