Recipes don't always have to do with cooking. In a general sense they are types of formulas, in which multiple factors lead to a particular outcome. However, the majority of people probably don't think of this definition when they hear the word "recipe." Typically, recipes consist of three main components, ingredients, directions, and a delicious end product. Each of these components play important roles in bringing satisfaction to the person eating this product. The ingredients make up the foundation of recipes, as they provide the flavors and substance needed in tasty food. While these ingredients may be tasty on their own, they need a set of directions to unify them to make the final product. Finally, this final product can take many forms, whether it be a dessert, entree, or appetizer. Each of these forms have their own unique effect on the diner’s experience. Similarly, Celeste Ng uses a variety of recipes in her fictional novel Everything I Never Told You to create characters, setting, and story plots.
Each character in Ng’s novel is made up of multiple unique ingredients, as seen in the creation of Jack Wolff and Marilyn. Ng uses Nathan’s experiences with Jack as ingredients to create his wild, irresponsible, and shady character. Nath reveals how Jack is known for taking the virginity of girls at his high school, and he is constantly considering Jack as a suspect in Lydia’s death. Ng’s description of Nathan’s experience at the Y with Jack, where Jack taunts Nath in the pool after playing a racist joke on him, shows Jack’s racism as well. Also, as Nath thinks about whether or not to tell his parents about Lydia’s relationship with Jack, he thinks, “All the neighbors had whispered about it when the Wolffs had moved in, how Janet Wolff was divorced, how Jack ran wild while she worked late shifts at the hospital.”(Ng 16) Ng presents all of these ingredients with the directions for the recipe being to empathize with Nath, a seemingly perfect child, to solidify this indecent image of Jack. On the other hand, the majority of Marilyn’s character is created through her past. This past filled with her dreams and desires, her defiance of her mother, and her relationship with James make up the three main ingredients to her character. From her past desires, it’s seen that she’s driven, wanting more than what the stereotypical housewife life would provide. This carries over into her defiance of her mother, which depicts her unhappiness in the housewife life she got stuck in. Lastly, her relationship with James reveals her impulsive nature, as Ng writes, “When she’d kissed him, she’d surprised herself. It had been such an impulse,” (Ng 36) after Marilyn kissed James for the first time. These ingredients are added chronologically in varying amounts to produce Marilyn’s character. Ng uses similar recipes throughout Everything I Never Told You to create a distinct setting as well.
Even though Ng reveals the setting of the story in the first few pages, May 1977 in Middlewood, Ohio, she uses ingredients surrounding racism, sexism, and cultural stigmas to add context to it. Nathan’s experience playing Marco Polo at the Y when a little girl shouts “Chink can’t find China.”(Ng 90) as a taunt directed towards Nath, along with James’s past of being the only non-white kid in his school, show the difference in racial tolerance between today’s society, and the US in 1977. To illustrate the inequality between men and women at the time, Ng uses the ingredients of Marilyn’s struggle to become a doctor along with her mom’s influence on her to be a housewife. The final ingredient to this setting is the description of people's reactions to the Wolff family moving into town. The fact that Mrs. Wolff was divorced seemed to be the most fascinating thing about the family, as was noted earlier “All the neighbors had whispered about it when the Wolffs had moved in, how Janet Wolff was divorced.”(Ng 16) Ng paints a picture of how unaccepted and uncommon divorces were at the time. Ng blends this setting and the characters she created to cook up the juicy mystery of the story.
The majority of the mystery surrounding Lydia’s death is made up of characters such as Jack Wolff and the policemen, and their actions. As said before, Nathan suspects Jack Wolff of being involved in Lydia’s death, and Jack’s reputation supports Nathan’s claim. However, an opposing ingredient, the policemen, are happy with concluding that Lydia killed herself. To support the police’s claim, Ng once again uses Nathan’s thoughts as an ingredient, this time depicting Lydia’s lonely and depressing life. Nath’s thoughts of “the strangeness of her family. A family with no friends, a family of misfits.”(Ng 112) when trying to find reasons for why the police won’t investigate Jack thoroughly reference his family's ethnicity. It also implies that just because his family is different in terms of race, it would be easier to deem suicide as the cause of Lydia’s death in the eyes of a racist. Along with this mystery, the novel supports a side dish of a plot focused on Marilyn’s struggle against sexism, made mostly from the ingredients of Marilyn’s character and setting. The influence of Marilyn’s mom, blended with the sexism present in the setting is a recipe for great hardships that Marilyn must overcome throughout the story.
One cup of characters, three ounces of setting, and a pinch of mystery. Blend till slightly chunky and bake at 1000 degrees for 20 minutes. This recipe, along with the many micro recipes Ng uses throughout Everything I Never Told You, allow her to effectively create an intense and mysterious plot, along with interesting characters, and setting.
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