A Recipe for Disaster

Celeste Ng, author of the novel “Everything I Never Told You,” slowly reveals “ingredients” in her writing that set the stage for later events in her stories. Throughout the first chapters of “Everything I Never Told You,” Ng allows concerning details about James, Marilyn, and their relationship to build, creating a fragile marriage, unable to withstand additional pressures. At first, a reader would have no clear way of understanding the strain behind this marriage; however, by learning about James and Marilyn’s past and by picking up Ng’s subtle clues, one can slowly determine the flaws in this apparently healthy relationship.

James and Marilyn come from widely differing backgrounds. James grows up trying to blend into the crowd--find a place where he fits in. Marilyn, on the other hand, has no qualms about upsetting the conventional social order of things in order to accomplish her goals. Although James and Marilyn possess many compatible characteristics, this glaring distinction prevents them from maintaining a long-term happy marriage as their contrasting ideals constantly clash. Unfortunately, the arrival of an unforeseen tragedy further accelerates the deterioration of their relationship.

Lydia’s death applies even more pressure to the pre-existing tension between James and Marilyn. Marilyn, seeking the persons responsible for her daughter’s death, will eventually find only herself and James to blame. Unearthing “what went wrong” will only highlight James and Marilyn’s conflicting opinions about their lifestyle. And as Marilyn openly attempts to determine a guilty party, James reacts in the opposite fashion. He completely shuts down. By hiding his emotions and trying to shelter his grieving family, he hinders Marilyn’s pursuit of the truth. Her pursuit continues to irritate James, who, having decided that Lydia’s death was a suicide, considers Marilyn to be in denial of the obvious. As James and Marilyn remain stubbornly fixed in their ways, these opposing coping mechanisms further strain their aging love.

James and Marilyn’s relationship is doomed. Ng clearly conveys this message by gradually exposing the reader to the developing flaws in Marilyn and James’s relationship and the reasons why those flaws can only grow. And finally, after adding the tragedy of Lydia’s death to the growing turmoil, their marriage has no chance of survival. Ng has created a recipe for disaster.