The second novel from best selling author Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere was named book of the year by several publications, chosen as Reese's Book Club pick of September 2017, and has been made into a short series on Hulu, starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon. Full disclosure, I did watch the Hulu series before reading the book (it was very good). This book deals with infertility, abortion, child abandonment, fire, a car accident, death, and a missing child.
Elena Richardson lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio with her husband and four children in a seemingly picture perfect life. She writes for the local newspaper, her husband is a well established lawyer, her children are smart, attractive, talented, and popular - mostly. Then Mia Warren moves into the idyllic town with her daughter Pearl. Mia, who is an artist and lives a life that Elena just cannot comprehend, moving her and her daughter every time a project wraps up, never living anywhere for long, taking with them only what they can pack into their little VW Rabbit. This time though, Mia has promised Pearl that they are here to stay. Mia and Elena find themselves on opposing sides of a battle for a little Chinese-American girl who is in the process of being adopted by a white family. On the surface, this book deals with the court case that decides the fate of the baby girl, but deep down we navigate the wilds of teenage love, the complex and sometimes difficult relationships we have with our parents, how fear can change the way you view the world, and what happens when a person is so convinced of what is right and wrong that they can't see the shades of nuance in between.
I reviewed Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts earlier this year, and while I enjoyed it, I enjoyed this book so much more. There were so many overlapping stories and you really ended up caring about most of the characters, even if some of them seemed very superficial at first glance. The custody case that serves at the background plot of the book really made me think about representation. You get to see far more than the characters in the book, witnessing why the girl's birth mother made the choices that she did and the struggles that the adoptive parents faced in their attempt to become parents, that you really feel for both sides and realize there is no good answer to who gains custody of the baby. But the real masterpiece of the book is the relationship between the Richardsons and the Warrens. While Pearl finds something that she is missing in the Richardson household, stability and structure, each of the Richardson children find something that they were missing with Mia Warren. Mia sees them with a fresh set of eyes, and because of that can see better what they are struggling with. By the end, everything has changed, and yet nothing has changed at all.
This book was not always easy, but it was worth it. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng gets 4 out of 5 stars. I will also be reading her debut novel at some point, although maybe I need some lighter books in between. See the link below to my review of Our Missing Hearts, her most recent novel.
For more from Celeste Ng, visit her website at https://www.celesteng.com/
Pairs well with a freshly mowed lawn the neighbors could only dream of and a hot fudge sundae.
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