Revisiting Little Fires Everywhere

Author: Celeste Ng

Release Date: September 12, 2017

Genre: Contemporary Drama

Avg. Rating (GR): 4.02

“I realize that I am not happy with the life I lead. I always had one kind of life in mind and things have turned out very differently.”

Little Fires Everywhere is a contemporary novel set in a small suburban town in Ohio called Shaker Heights. This place is seen as a Utopia, where most families are well off and affluent, owning their homes, driving nice cars while also having high paying careers and excellent schools for the children. They coin themselves as a progressive community. This novel follows the Richardsons. A picture perfect family who follow all the rules of their society. The mother, Mrs. Richardson, believes that in order to have a good life, you need to follow the rules that society has in place. As Celeste Ng puts it, “The matriarch, Mrs. Richardson, believes that if you follow the rules, you can avoid everything that is unpleasant, unseemly, or disastrous…”. “She is the embodiment of what Shaker Heights is all about”.

But, these “ideals” are turned on their head when Mia and her daughter Pearl move into town. Mia runs her household the exact opposite of Mrs. Richardson. She is a freelance artist who has lived paycheck to paycheck. Both she and her daughter moved from place to place, never staying for too long as Mia did not like to be tied down.

While Mrs. Richardson holds order above all, Mia finds happiness through freedom. From the start, both Mrs. Richardson and Mia realize these differences and both are put on edge. This is heightened when a custody battle ensues in the normally quiet paradise, and innocent differences take an ugly turn.

This novel delves into really hard hitting topics like: sex, race, class, and the justice system. Celeste Ng is an Asian American woman and I love how she integrates her own experiences as an Asian American, in her story. In an interview that I watched, she mentions how she realized that American culture revolves a lot on black and white issues and that everyone else seems “other”. She says that for her, being Asian American was almost as if she were an outsider looking in. Asian Americans are hardly spoken about in the media and they are given hardly any representation. As I watched her speak, I realized how hard of a time she had trying to understand her Chinese culture and who she is as an American born citizen. In the same interview she mentions how hard it is as a mother to teach her own child what being Asian American means. I really appreciated her honesty.

Another thing that I really appreciated that Celeste Ng added to the story was perspective. A passage in her book reads:

“One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules... was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.”

While the reader follows along through this blossoming story, she never leans towards one idea. She seems to want the reader to come up with their own decisions and form their own opinions just like the characters themselves. These perspectives come from not only the mothers, but their children, their lovers, their families, their friends and bystanders along for the ride. You clearly understand what the characters are motivated by and it makes it that much harder decide who is right and who is wrong. Because of this, I started to look deeper into who I am. I thought, “If I were in these situations would I be able to choose the right answer?” I wondered if the idea of right and wrong were as black and white. The truth is, I honestly don’t think so. There’s no obvious answer to every question, and even if we believe there is an obvious answer, hearing another side from someone else and get a new perspective can completely alter what we originally thought.

My Rating (5/5): ★★★★★