Everything I NeverTold You by Celeste Ng
We know Lydia is
dead from the first page, but we witness her family discover she is missing,
learn she is dead and then deal (or not deal) with their grief. Lydia, the middle child of the Lee family, was
the favorite child. Each family member
has a different picture of Lydia, each thinks they know her, but we learn that
no one really knew her.
We meet the family
in the seventies as the two eldest children are in high school. The Lee’s are a multi-racial couple (he is
first generation Chinese-American, she is Caucasian). Today no one would bat an eye, but then in
rural Ohio the Lee children are the only non-Caucasians in their school. Lydia is under pressure from both parents to
succeed where they believed they failed in their lives but she feels she needs
to hide what she thinks her parents will see as faults.
I was expecting a
thriller, but this was more a study of a family in crisis. Lydia is a complex character, living her life
for others more than herself. The end
hits hard because the reader learns everything Lydia hasn’t told anyone else
because she never got the chance.
