In the Kitchen with Ng

Everything I Never Told You is a scavenger hunt. In every story told through each character, the writer, Celeste Ng, hides clues. At first glance, these memories may seem irrelevant, but they are pieces of a puzzle. The question I constantly found myself asking is: “What led to this?” The hints Ng leaves are like ingredients in a very advanced recipe; they offer various answers to this question. Without them, the audience would not know how the Lee family got into their current situation. Not paying attention to these tiny details would cause you to become lost in a tragic story with no background to what triggered it.

I don’t know who Lydia is; no one reading the book does either. But somehow the writer, Celeste Ng, makes it feel like we do.  Ng never writes from Lydia’s point of view, but instead focuses in on those who were close to her. In doing so, she sheds light onto what kind of person Lydia was and what lead to her death/suicide. The more hidden clues Ng provides, the better we get to know Lydia; just as every individual ingredient adds to a more elaborate final dish. In chapter four, James brings forward a memory of teaching Nath to swim. He remembers sending Lydia to a babysitter while her brother and him ventured to the lake. “Mrs. Allen is watching your sister just so you could learn the breaststroke, Nathan” (Ng 88). As the reader, knowing Lydia has drowned, this line is very powerful. Without the knowledge that Lydia drowned in the lake, and that it was possibly a suicide, this line would mean nothing. Flour is just flour until you use it to bake a cake. Lydia was the middle child in her family. Often, middle children are overlooked. This line is a perfect example of that. James shoves Lydia to the side so that he can have one on one time with Nath. If her childhood consisted of repeatedly being neglected by her parents, it is very possible that her death was not an accident. This line adds so much to the possibility of Lydia’s death being suicide. Following the recipe metaphor, this behavior from her parents can be seen as a “key ingredient” in her reasoning for wanting to end her life.

James and Marilyn Lee are very inconsistent characters. Throughout chapters 1-5, bits and pieces of their past are revealed. As the reader, it is hard to figure out what kind of relationship the couple has without the flashbacks of them in their prime years of dating. Understandingly, they are acting “out of character” due to the death of their daughter. Along with the story of how they met and how their relationship started, you can get a sense of what kind of connection they had before Lydia died. In chapter two, the depth of their initial connection is described through James’s eyes. “Coming to her made him feel perfectly welcomed, perfectly at home, as he had never felt in his life before” (Ng 40). Their relationship starts there and descends into screaming matches where wives throw their coffee mugs across the room in rage and husbands wander off to sleep with their colleagues. Ng lays out a series of events that led to this change. Marilyn’s mom dying, James meeting Louisa, Marilyn dropping out of school, Lydia’s death: Ingredients to the shit-show that their marriage has become.   

 
Ng is a sneaky writer. She spreads out bits and pieces of the story and leaves you to put together. Keeping up with the story is like keeping up with an old cookbook. Not knowing about Lydia is like having directions in the recipe covered with dried up cake batter. But using what we know about the other instructions, we can infer what the missing step might be. And with the predictions that you are forced to make while reading, in the end you will see if you were correct; or if you were actually supposed to add three tablespoons of flour - not three cups.