Literary Engineer: Celeste Ng

When you think of an author, does an engineer appear in your mind? Maybe an artist or chef does but an engineer? Celeste Ng is a prime example of the so-called "literary engineer" from her well-placed mechanisms in her novel Everything I Never Told You. She focuses on the broken mechanism of a girl's death (who was called Lydia). As the story unfolds, the broken mechanism starts to affect the rest of a family system where her parent's develop unhealthy coping mechanisms. Ng creates a phenomenal effect, displaying how one fallen mechanism ruptures an entire system. 

Early in the novel, Marilyn, Lydia's mother, develops a coping mechanism which disturbs her role in the Lee family: being a loving mother. Marilyn is not an effective engineer. With creating unspoken rules such as "Don't talk about Lydia. Don't talk about the lake. Don't ask questions," (Ng 106) Marilyn limits herself to recover from the devastating loss of an important mechanism in the Lee family by fixing the system in isolation and covering-up the incident. 

As a result of her narrow-minded behavior, Marilyn becomes insensitive with other family members. She does not focus on the well-being of her remaining children: Hannah and Nathan. Neither does she monitor her conversations when confronting James about being cooperative with the police. She rudely says, "Unlike some people, I don't just kowtow to the police." (Ng 116) Marilyn practically becomes as effective as the Lydia's broken mechanism which places more restraint on the Lee family.

On the other hand, there is James, Lydia's father, who fails to be an effective engineer by protecting his emotions in a withdrawn way similar to Marilyn. Unlike Marilyn, he does not aim to actively make assumptions on how Lydia's mechanism broke. Instead, James wants to have a meaningful conversation with his wife about how to recuperate from their loss and build a strong family without it. He is met with a withholding partner, stubborn to discuss the matter.

James is not the victim here as it may be perceived. His ego as the "man of the house" to protect his wife from gruesome information backfires when she is not cooperative back. With raging emotions, James undermines his values to stay a loyal partner to Marilyn by cheating on her with his teaching assistant, Louisa.

These two mechanisms insinuate that James does not care enough about his family system when he can make the effort to look at what is important: communication. He read Lydia's autopsy which states, "suicide, homicide, or accident could not yet be determined. The cause of death was asphyxia." (Ng 69) Communicating one phrase could have shown that Lydia's death did not have a murderer involved like Marilyn had thought which results in James and Marilyn arguing less from discussing the evidence (and not speculation).

The mechanisms at work in Ng's novel create a well-constructed, realistic effect of a family system. She does not adhere to overused fairy-tale depictions which lose the sense of relatability. As for Marilyn and James, their sets of responsibilities and information are limited by their personalities to build without their fallen mechanism. The two create one of a plethora of mechanisms Ng introduces in Everything I Never Told You. 

So go out there and find all of them! Check out Celeste Ng's novel Here