In Shaker Heights, Ohio, one of America’s first planned communities, order and harmony are prized. Ssh_exchange_identification: read: connection reset by peer. The Asian American writer Celeste Ng’s having partially grown up there helps to ground her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, with a strong sense of place. Set in the 1990s (the decade is deftly pinned when the characters watch Jerry Springer), Shaker Heights is described as the sort of rectitudinous neighbourhood often portrayed in media versions of American suburbs in the 1950s.
Yet in fiction, there’s always trouble in Dodge. Ng begins with the affluent Richardsons, after someone has burned down their house. The three older kids immediately blame the younger girl – the family nut job, who is conspicuously missing. It’s an eye-catching opener, but it might not pay off. The problem isn’t the identity of the culprit, naturally withheld until the very end, but that the crime seems profoundly under‑motivated.
The world in which I had read this book would be indistinguishable from the one in which I hadn't
Little Fires Everywhere is less about arson than babies. Ng constructs a three-ring circus, each subplot posing a moral quandary regarding an infant. 1) Close friends of the Richardsons have taken in a baby abandoned at a fire station, whom they hope to adopt. But the little girl’s Chinese mother has got her act together, and wants her daughter back. 2) Years before, the Richardson’s tenant, Mia, carried a child for an affluent but infertile couple, after manually inseminating herself with the man’s sperm. Yet she began to form an attachment to the unborn child. 3) The older Richardson daughter gets pregnant by her unwitting boyfriend. Her family could afford to raise the baby, but a child would interfere with her forthcoming university education.
In each instance, whose rights and desires take precedence?
“It came, over and over, down to this,” Ng spells out, perhaps too explicitly. “What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?”
In case No 3, I wasn’t torn. I’m pro-choice and under-keen on teenage pregnancy, though other readers may feel differently. In the first and second cases, both opposing parties have a legitimate claim on the child, and one party will have to sacrifice for the other’s happiness. Ng deliberately sets poorer biological mothers against prosperous couples who might provide more opportunities, thus asking in whose custody a child is better off.
The trouble was that I didn’t care.
I have struggled with this review. Little Fires Everywhere is well crafted. The characters are vividly drawn. The author manages a large cast, multiple points of view, and all three rings of her circus with grace and authority. The dynamics between siblings and within teenage romances ring true. The prose is supremely competent, and I didn’t mark a single line as weak – although, unusually, I underscored only one sentence in the whole novel (“The silence seemed to stretch itself out like taffy”) as being especially good.
Celeste Ng: ‘It’s a novel about race, and class and privilege’
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Possibly this childless reviewer has something missing, and is therefore indifferent to stories about babies, with which readers who are parents will deeply engage. Alternatively, the novel itself may have something missing, although I strain to identify exactly what that is. Ironically – is it fire? The interwoven plots do not feel contrived, but they do feel designed. The temperature never seems to rise above 72 degrees fahrenheit. When all was said and done, I wasn’t sure this novel means anything. It has a theme. But does it have a point?
This could be the kind of fiction that many book buyers are looking for. It has all the requisite elements for a satisfying read, since “meaning something” may be elective. It’s likely to be well reviewed elsewhere; Ng’s debut, Everything I Never Told You, won multiple awards. After all, my experience of reading this book was perfectly pleasant. But the world in which I read it would be indistinguishable from the one in which I didn’t. This is a variety of novel that unnerves me, because it’s extremely well done and yet I didn’t warm to it. So what’s my problem? Other lifelong fiction readers may have sometimes been visited by the same unsettling doubt: “There’s nothing wrong with this book. So maybe I just don’t like novels as much as I thought.”
Lionel Shriver’s novella, The Standing Chandelier, is published by the Borough Press in November.
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is published by Little, Brown (£14.99). To order a copy for £12.74 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
– ToggleAIDetection is a Toggle Command– The effects cease once the game is exited.– ToggleAIDetection is considered to be a Safe command to use– Player: N/A– List: N/ASetUnconscious 1: puts the selected target into a permanent state of “sleep”. Ex: Type the command and execute. Fallout 4 add caps console command list.
Discussion Questions:
1.”The firemen said there were little fires everywhere.” What does the title of the book mean in relation to the story?
2. The novel is set about two decades ago in the late 1990s. Some of the characters are supposedly blind to the colour of people. Do you feel that the attitudes toward race and class has changed since that time period? What differences or similarities are there today?
3. Shaker Heights a suburb of Cleveland, is written like a character in the novel. The community is planned from the layout to the colour of the houses. What do you think about planned communities? Would you benefit from living in a planned community? What are the pros and cons of living in a community like that?
Little Fires Everywhere Themes
4. There are many themes in Little Fires Everywhere, such as family, motherhood, secrets, adoption, race, identity, love, friendship etc, which impacted you the most?
5. Which mother-daughter relationships could you identify the most with?
6. Mrs. Richardson’s character is complex, from her way of choosing tenants for her Winslow house to her standing up for her friends. Did you like her personality? How did you feel about her? Why is she called Mrs. Richardson and not her first name like the other characters? What is the author trying to portray?
7. Which of the main characters did you think changed the most significantly in the novel?
8. Do you think Mia and Pearl’s relationship changed after they moved to Shaker Heights? Was their relationship stronger or weaker?
9. Mia is an artist and photographer in the novel. She is concerned with transformation in her work as for her it’s the true meaning of art. Do you think that moving to and living in Shaker Heights transformed her? What is Mia’s perception of starting over in Shaker Heights?
10. The court case of the adoption of the Chinese American baby ultimately asks who ‘deserves’ to be a mother. Who do you think should raise May Ling/ Mirabelle?
11. Why did Mia become Mrs. Richardson enemy? What bothers Mrs. Richardson most about Mia?
12. Pearl is a single child and lived an itinerant life. She wants to be a ‘normal’ teenager. Did you think that she would become a ‘normal’ teenager?
13. Mia gave the Richardsons a piece of art each that intimately spoke to them. Has an art piece ever influenced you in a meaningful way?
14. What do you think happened to Izzy?
15. Was there a part in the book that surprised you? How did the novel make you feel?
16. After reading Little Fires Everywhere, who would you pass the book onto?
Enhance Your Book Club:
Check out the Study Guide for Book Clubs: Little Fires Everywhere. This discussion aid contains plot synopsis, character analyses, theme analyses and more.
Check out the Study Guide for Book Clubs: Little Fires Everywhere. This discussion aid contains plot synopsis, character analyses, theme analyses and more.
Check out Little Fires Everywhere book review!
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Summary | Author Bio | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions | Full Version |
Little Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng, 2017
Penguin Publishers
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735224292
Summary
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned — from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead.
And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother — who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair.
But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town — and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. (From the publisher.)
Celeste Ng, 2017
Penguin Publishers
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780735224292
Summary
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned — from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead.
And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother — who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair.
But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town — and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. (From the publisher.)