But at that moment, she had known, with a certainty she would never feel about anything else in her life, that it was right, that she wanted this man in her life. Something inside her said, He understands. What it's like to be different....
Hers had been just one of the pale, pretty faces, indistinguishable from the next, and though he would never fully realize it, this was the first reason he came to love her: because she had blended in so perfectly, because she had seemed so completely and utterly at home.
Boy did I hate this book.
Everything I Never Told You is about a family in a suburb/small college town in Ohio in the 70s dealing with the death of 16 year old Lydia, the middle child. James, the father, is Chinese-American, and his wife, Marilyn is white. Nath is the oldest, about to graduate high school and go to Harvard when his sister dies, and Hannah is about 10, the mostly ignored member of the family. There's some mystery regarding Lydia's death, in that we don't find out until the end what events actually precipitated her drowning in the lake near the Lees' house, but it becomes clear early on that there was no foul play involved.
The book flips back and forth between the remaining Lees trying to cope with the loss of Lydia and the family history that lead to her death. James grew up a shy child with few friends as the only Chinese person at his school. He was isolated and never fit in, which he desperately wanted to do. When he was a young professor he met Marilyn, a student in one of his classes who desperately wanted to be a doctor. Her mother taught home ec and always encouraged her to meet a nice man and settle down, and leave the doctoring to the gentlemen. Marilyn rebelled against her mother's desires for her until she met James, and then found herself pulled down her mother's path anyway: pregnant, married, and dropping out of school her senior year. Marilyn's mother told her not to marry James right before their wedding because he was Chinese, but Marilyn did it anyway, and that was the last time they ever spoke.
The Lee family undergoes its first real trauma when Marilyn's mother dies. Nath and Lydia are 8 and 6 when Marilyn goes home to Virginia to settle her mom's affairs. She realizes how disappointed she is in herself for not becoming a doctor and for following in her mother's footsteps. She comes home, saves some money, and then, instead of having a meaningful conversation with James, just dips. She moves to Toledo without leaving a note, terrifying the rest of her family. The police convince James that she's probably safe, she just abandoned them, but that is cold comfort. Marilyn is forced to return to her life, however, when she finds she is pregnant with Hannah. James brings her home, and they resume their life as if nothing happened. Marilyn decides that if she can't be a doctor, she'll make sure Lydia is, and puts the weight of her expectations on her daughter, as her mother did to her (except ratcheted up to 11). Lydia decides that the only way to keep Marilyn from leaving again is to be the perfect daughter, which means indulging all of Marilyn's pressure. While Marilyn is gone, James generally detaches from his children, but pays attention just enough to realize that Nath is more interested in science and space than with making friends. He sees his failure to be popular reflected in Nath and hates him for it.
As they grow up, Lydia and Nath form a bond out of necessity, helping each other and comforting each other as they deal with their parents' mistreatment of them. Nath deflects attention from Lydia when Marilyn's spotlight gets too bright, and Lydia gives Nath sympathy and the knowledge that he is seen by someone, at least. They all ignore Hannah, for the most part.
The pressure starts to mount as Lydia starts failing her classes, buckling under the stress, at the same time that Nath, her one lifeline in the family, prepares to head to college. Nath finally gives in to his resentment of Lydia when he gets into Harvard and still his dad doesn't give a shit because both parents are too invested in Lydia. All of this sets up Lydia's death as a suicide pretty neatly, but when we finally find out what happened to her, it turns out that she has a revelation about not wanting to fulfill her mother's dreams and having her own instead, and determines to finally have a conversation with her parents about why she's so miserable (it would be the first real conversation that anyone in this family has ever had). She decides that the way to really show that she's serious is to row to the middle of the lake and swim back to the dock, even though she doesn't know how to swim, for some reason. It's not clear why she never learned to swim but Nath and Hannah did, or why she thought that this would be a good idea. Was her resolve to change her circumstances a delusion and she really did unconsciously kill herself? Who knows.
After her death, the family predictably goes through some shit. James starts sleeping with his young, Chinese TA, because of course he does. Marilyn can't believe that Lydia did this to herself. Nath is convinced that their neighbor, who he's always hated, had something to do with it. And they all basically ignore Hannah. After the affair comes to light, though, everyone (particularly the parents) realize how shitty they've been to each other, and after that bare minimum of self-reflection, decide to be better family members. So I guess they all lived happily ever after when Lydia died? You don't have to take my word for it, either:
"There is nowhere to go but on. Still, part of her (Marilyn) longs to go back for one instant - not to change anything, not even to speak to Lydia, not to tell her anything at all. Just to open the door and see her daughter there, asleep, one more time, and know all was well."
Hey lady, maybe if you're going back one more time to the night your daughter died you should think about telling her not to drown in the lake! Maybe have your daughter alive AND realize y'all should all stop being shitty to each other!
So generally I didn't like the book because I'm tired of reading well-written novels about miserable people being miserable (The Female Persuasion, The Mothers, Normal People, The Book of Speculation, etc). But the cliches just built up over the novel and drowned out the interesting parts. The book spends more time on James having an affair because he's sad about his daughter dying and not being able to communicate with his wife (zzzzzz), and hardly touches on the implications that the other woman is also Chinese! That'd be much more interesting! Or to explore the tension between Marilyn's desire to stand out and James's desire to fit in. Ng sets it up when they first meet (see above), but instead of making that a focal point of their relationship with each other, the desires just serve as the motivations for torturing their children.
I was disappointed, because I really liked Little Fires Everywhere. Oh well. No more sad books 2020.
PS
One of the worst moments was right at the end, when Nath is trying to imagine what his sister's last moments were like, and Ng writes: "He can guess, but he won't ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she'd never told him." See what she did there? That's basically the title of the book! Subtle! But also, the only two members of the family who did understand each other were Lydia and Nath! The only two characters that that wouldn't apply to. Ugh.
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