Everything I Never Told You

Everything I Never Told You brilliantly touches upon stigmatized topics such as dysfunctional family dynamics and parents' favouritism of their golden children. Ng interweaves issues such as racism and sexism so effortlessly into a moving narrative of familial tragedy. I cannot wait to reread this novel!

It's an unbelievably beautifully written story about tangled relationships between family members: mother and daughter, father and son, parents and their children as one set; what does it feel like to be a sibling, sister/brother? What rivalries do they have and why? Is it easy to turn away from your regrets, broken dreams, the guilt that's eating you from inside? So many questions are raised in the book, but one will be also provided with some answers.

This is the first sentence to Celeste Ng’s debut novel and it already draws you in. Everything I Never Told You tells the story of a chinese-american family in the 1970s. On May 3, 1977, the sixteen-year-old Lydia doesn’t come to breakfast. One day after her corpse is found in a near lake. Now the question, everybody tries to find the answer to, is: Was it suicide or murder? This novel is about the mourning family members, Lydia’s parents, her older brother Nath and her younger sister Hanna, and how they deal with their loss, their feelings about Lydia and her unfortunate death. A large part of the plot tells the past of each family member. The reader gets to know more about the parents, Marilyn and James Lee, how they got to know each other and their life before and after their children were born. We learn Nath’s theory about who killed his sister and about little Hanna, who knows more than anybody suspects. The story travels between present and past in easy circles and the truth about Lydia’s life, her emotions and her feelings about being the centre of her parents’ universe, steadily unravels itself. Until the reader, and only the reader, discovers at the end of the book what really happened in Lydia’s last night alive. I, personally, loved Celeste Ng’s writing style. The chapters were very long but it wasn’t a problem because it was so effortlessly to read and I flew through the pages. When I started this book I honestly didn't expect that it would be so heart-wrenching. Although at the beginning I was sceptical if I would like the parts about the family's past, I really enjoyed these segments in the second half of the book. The ending was beautiful and heart-breaking at once. I am really glad I picked this book up.

Eindringlich erzählt Celeste Ng von Verlust, dem Bedürfnis dazuzugehören und den Erwartungen, die Eltern an ihre Kinder stellen - und welche Folgen diese mit sich führen.