There's no doubt that Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng is a depressing and sobering novel. I mean, the book starts off with saying that this girl Lydia died. That's the most shocking beginning to any book that I've read, and her family has no clue how or why this happened. All of our questions are answered in the end, but Ng skillfully reveals her hand to us during the plot of the book because she loves to make her readers consider the bigger picture. Ng creates subplots for the characters and puts them into the main storyline to help us understand where they're coming from. I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of messed up stuff that happens in this book, but Ng tries to help everyone figure out why the characters do what they do. Instead of allowing the reader to just skim through the book without question, she wants us to truly analyze what we're reading. Characters do some bad things that shouldn't be forgivable or understandable at first glance; however, Ng adds background to these people to make them real. The characters in the book aren't one-dimension, boring objects; they're living, breathing people. For example, James is a real jerk to his son Nath for no reason, and that pissed me off at first. I thought he was just a bad guy, especially when he cheated on Marilyn, but that's beside the point. If we actually take a closer look, James was sculpted into this kind of person because of his childhood treatment. He had zero friends. None. He lived in isolation as an outcast from society, mocked because of his race. That screws up a person for sure, and it's reflected in his rocky relationship with Nath. He treats Nath poorly because he doesn't want his son to end up the same way he did, even though he sees it happening already. It's a sort of tough-love moment that's kind of understandable, but not really. Also, Marilyn can't be left out of the spotlight. She's overbearing and oppressive to her daughter Lydia. She can definitely be held responsible for Lydia's death, but the saddest thing is that she can't even control how she is. Marilyn does all these bad things to Lydia out of a deep love for her, but the true reason for her actions stems from her earlier life. She desperately wants to live out her failed dreams of becoming a doctor through Lydia, but Marilyn doesn't realize the awful damage she is causing in doing so. Ever since Marilyn married James, she always felt that she missed out on the part of her life in which she distinguishes herself from everyone else. She doesn't want that to happen to Lydia, so she puts pressure on her to follow Lydia's dreams, which are actually Marilyn's dreams in disguise. Marilyn's intentions are legitimate and heartfelt, but she goes about it in all the wrong ways. Marilyn wants the best for Lydia, but she sacrifices Lydia's life figuratively and literally to try to get her to succeed. Wait, I think I'm missing something. I'm sure that I had more to say after this. Oh, I almost forgot to mention Hannah, probably because she's so forgettable. Her quiet and shy personality grew from the fact that her family doesn't even know she exists. Marilyn forgot to set the table for her one time. How can you forget about one of your children? Her family shuns her, so she's become super sensitive to emotions, and she's freakishly good at picking up what the members of the family are actually feeling. She's also the only one to discover that Jack secretly liked Nath, which is a huge plot point! Anyway, Celeste Ng wants us to consider how the character's past experiences shaped these depressing actions that we read about. There's no comfort in what she does, but at least it makes half of the poor decisions in the novel actually understandable. I can't even imagine how this book would be if Ng left me to think through all the things the characters have done. Everything I Never Told You was a great read because all the characters are real. They weren't thought up by Celeste Ng to be good components of a novel; rather, they're born and raised in the pages of the book, and they make decisions based on how they grew up.
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