Little Fires Everywhere

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible spoilers ***

This is a great book. I’m surprised to be saying that because this book is on the short list for an Evergreen award. I’ve been working my way through that list and every other book I’ve encountered has been less than impressive. To be nominated a book needs to be politically correct in the extreme but Celeste Ng managed that without being heavy handed. True, the author doesn’t much care for upper-middle-class white suburbia, but she doesn’t use tropes. Her characters may not always act in a well-behaved manner but they have their reasons and those reasons have been well thought out by the author. This is true for every single character in the story. Even bit characters are thoughtfully drawn. There is one scene in which Mrs. Richardson wants a look at some very confidential medical records. She puts pressure on a schoolgirl companion but that woman, who now runs the clinic, suddenly finds a will of her own. We see the mental process she goes through as she comes to the conclusion that not only would it be illegal to divulge the information Mrs. Richardson seeks but it would be ethically wrong. Every character is well drawn. Every character has a backstory in which we see the roots of future actions. That’s quite impressive.

The plot is complex and moves from character to character as they go about their daily lives. One thing influences another. A small fire starts here. An ember moves there. A false name entered in desperation as a requirement for admittance to a clinic has an impact later on. There are plenty of misunderstandings and they, too contribute to the development of the story.
The pacing was excellent and even though the book is fairly long I didn’t grow tired, could read it for hours without taking a break, and was never bored.

I suspect that it was in the works for some time. Little Fires Everywhere was published in 2017 but it makes reference to the search engine AltaVista. This seems strange because most people would search through Google or one of the similar ones. In addition, AltaVista was shut down in 2013.

If you enjoy looking behind the scenes and understanding people’s motivations then I highly recommend this book.




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