Everything I Never Told You in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

Jan 03, 2016 Kelly rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2-star, cover-me-blue, 2016-read

Like Lydia, I'm also half-Chinese. However, growing up in the US I didn't experience anything like what the Lees feel. I understand small-town racial tension, but James Lee's insecurity, and the way his kids were teased in school, seemed a little too extreme. It was annoying how much Ng harped on this throughout the story; in general, James and Marilyn, the parents, were painted to be absolutely self-absorbed and irritatingly insecure. Ng felt the need to demonstrate, again and again, how obsess Like Lydia, I'm also half-Chinese. However, growing up in the US I didn't experience anything like what the Lees feel. I understand small-town racial tension, but James Lee's insecurity, and the way his kids were teased in school, seemed a little too extreme. It was annoying how much Ng harped on this throughout the story; in general, James and Marilyn, the parents, were painted to be absolutely self-absorbed and irritatingly insecure. Ng felt the need to demonstrate, again and again, how obsessive each was about fixing the mistakes of their past: James with his inability to find social acceptance, and Marilyn with her regrets about foregoing a medical career for motherhood. It was unclear why they both fixated on middle child Lydia as proof that they could live up to their potential. Nath, as the firstborn, is clearly bright, mature and responsible; yet his mother ignores Nath's interest in science (similar to her own studies) and his father rejects Nath as being "too similar" to himself at that age... And yet somehow Lydia, who is also friendless and lonely, is viewed through rose-colored glasses. Nath is accepted into Harvard, but the only thing the family cares about is that Lydia is failing physics. It just doesn't add up for me. A lot of people have written about how the characters are three-dimensional, but I found them to be quite static. Each has a specific role in the family and they stick to their part like a dissonant quintet, bleating the same notes in an endlessly repetitive and sad song.

The reactions of the Lee family to Lydia's disappearance (and death) are just a little too pat, too expected, and therefore the book is slow and dull. Well-written, sure, but I kept hoping throughout that it would lift out of the one-track thought processes of each character, opening up into realization, enlightenment, or a revelation that would hit me like a punch in the face, but no. In the end there is only what has always been: a close, socially isolated family trapped in their roles as siblings, parents and spouses, unable to achieve happiness or self-satisfaction. For the reader, a cast of characters whose thoughts and actions loop in ruts so deep that they're as permanent as the scratches in records, and a 16-year-old girl who throws herself into a lake for murky and uncertain reasons (her friend Jack is gay? her brother is going to Harvard? her father bought her necklace? her mother is putting too much pressure on her? a failed driver's permit test?). She is able to rebel against Jack, her teachers, her brother, and yet she feels so trapped by her parents that the only way out is death?

Everything I Never Told You was not nearly original enough to warrant all of the glowing accolades. There are pieces of Lydia's story that simply don't add up to suicide. The book chugs along as predictably as car on a circular track; ultimately I was left dissatisfied and unimpressed by this family. ...more

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