Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
“We’re friendly people and we have a wonderful time!” said a woman at the Shaker Heights Country Club recently, and she was right, for the inhabitants of Utopia do, in fact, appear to lead a rather happy life.
- “The Good Life in Shaker Heights,” Cosmopolitan, March 1963
Before we even start the book, author Celeste Ng wants us to know that Shaker Heights, is, indeed a special place. It’s the kind of place that was created to build a perfect town, a town that regulated everything colors, size, precision mowed lawns, a place that could look down with a haughty air at the nearby gritty city of Cleveland, a progressive and integrated environment they pride themselves on.
But as the book opens, the utopian world of Mrs. Richardson has been shattered as she watches her house “burn to the ground.” We are introduced to Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl, tenants of a rental property owned by the Richardsons, and we know that somehow the fire is connected to Mia and Pearl but we don’t know how.
Ng proceeds to unfold a beautifully written story of two women. Straight-laced, precise and perfect Elena Richardson, married to her college sweetheart a successful lawyer, moved back to her hometown, mother to four teenagers, writer for her local paper, having sacrificed her ambition to become a national journalist in order to build her perfect life, Elena is the personification of the Utopian life of Shaker Heights. Bohemian and itinerant artist Mia Warren arrives with her fifteen-year-old daughter Pearl. They travel light, their possessions can fit into their little VW. They are constantly on the move, on the go every 6 months or so after Mia has finished an art project. Forty Six places so far. She works to earn enough for them to live on, in a restaurant and also in Mrs. Richardson’s house.
Pearl is promised by her mother that they are going to stay put for a while and Pearl begins to set down some roots and becomes friends with the Richardson children. In a gesture of what she sees as generosity Elena, having already rented an apartment to the Warren’s because of her sense of helping those in need, hires Mia to clean and cook in her house.
It is clear that Mrs. Richardson and Mia are destined to clash and in a restrained and precise style Ng builds up her narrative to the point of release, which is devastating but not overwrought.
It is the mid 1990s in the age before cellphones and social media dominated the life of teens. They still leave notes in lockers, ride their bikes to friends’ houses, watch TV in the den after school. This is the perfect world that Pearl finds in the house of this perfect Shaker Heights family. “it was the greenness of the lawn, the sharp lines of white mortar between the bricks, the rustle of the maple leaves in the gentle breeze, the very breeze itself. It was the soft smells of detergent and cooking and grass that mingled in the entryway…It was as if instead of entering a house she was entering the idea of a house, some archetype brought to life here before her. Some she’d only heard about but never seen.”
Mia and Pearl’s lives as wanderers could not be more different. Mia is a free spirit, she doesn’t live by rules and regulations and that is what draws the Richardson children, particularly daughters Izzy and Lexie. Each child finds something in the other mother that they feel is missing in their own lives.
The novel revolves around the competing tensions between the two mothers that are brought to the surface as the town becomes embroiled in an adoption case. The McCulloughs, old friends of the Richardsons, adopt an abandoned Chinese baby after years of trying to conceive. They are dedicated to the child and affluent enough to provide all the material comforts imaginable. Mia realizes that the abandoned child is the daughter of a workmate at her restaurant, Bebe, and encourages her to reclaim May Ling, now Mirabelle.
Ng explores the issues of adoption, race and class that emerge as a result of this contested case. She does so with a such a fine touch that the reader is unaware of the fierceness of the grip her storytelling has. Ng herself grew up in Shaker Heights and she writes about the place as an insider, but also with a critical eye that comes from having enough distance from a place that you love that you are able to see things with clearer vision.
The adoption story is another thread in this beautifully woven together story about motherhood. What is expected of mothers, what mothers expect of themselves, how children can make mothers question every decision they have ever made, and the fragile base that many mothers build a life on. Look behind the edifice and most mothers have a complicated story to tell.
Ng’s depiction of Elena Richardson is one that has stayed with me long after finishing the book. She is a rule keeper, a planner, someone who has followed the path to a good life, a perfect home and a perfect mother, but her world has been shaken by the arrival in town of the interloper “Now here was this Mia, a completely different kind of woman leading a completely different life; who seemed to make her own rules with no apologies…A part of her wanted to study Mia like an anthropologist, to understand why—and how—she did what she did. Another part of her—though she was only vaguely aware of it at the moment, was uneasy, wanted to keep an eye on Mia as you might keep your eye on a dangerous beast.”
As we learn Mia’s backstory we learn that that too, was ultimately determined by the decisions that motherhood forced upon her.
There are so many meticulously constructed characters and relationships in this richly detailed book that once you open it you are completely absorbed. Ng also is superb at painting the quotidian details of a perfect suburban lifestyle, the great mythical creation of modern America that tries to hide all the drama and passion that is innate to the human species, something that frightens Elena Richardson “All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leap like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles.” Ng has written a perceptive and engrossing book about human nature that teaches us about passion and how it can spark “little fires everywhere” that are ultimately capable of burning the house down. With this, her second novel, she has cemented her position of one of a new generation of American storytellers of the human experience following in the footsteps of greats like Anne Tyler and Ann Patchett.
BEFORE YOU READ:
Length: 338
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Themes: motherhood, family, class, race, choices
Commitment: A stunningly drawn narrative that grabs you from page one and doesn’t let you go.
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