Little Fires Everywhere

by Celeste Ng

little fires everywhere,”

they got used to the detached garage—stationed well at the back of the house, again to preserve the view of the street—and learned to carry an umbrella to keep them dry as they ran from car to house on rainy days. Later, when Mr. Yang went away for two weeks in July, to visit his mother in Hong Kong, they learned that an unmowed lawn would result in a polite but stern letter from the city, noting that their grass was over six inches tall and that if the situation was not rectified, the city would mow the grass—and charge them a hundred dollars—in three days. There were many rules to be learned.

welcome to suburbia, where it's all about appearances

everything could—and should—be planned out, and that by doing so you could avoid the unseemly, the unpleasant, and the disastrous.

gentrification and colonization at its finest

Mrs. Richardson looked at the house as a form of charity. She kept the rent low—real estate in Cleveland was cheap, but apartments in good neighborhoods like Shaker could be pricey—and she rented only to people she felt were deserving but who had, for one reason or another, not quite gotten a fair shot in life. It pleased her to make up the difference.

Mr. Yang was exactly the kind of tenant Mrs. Richardson wanted: a kind person to whom she could do a kind turn, and who would appreciate her kindness.

model minority

For Pearl and her mother to have had to share a room—Moody almost could not believe that people could be so poor.

He had had an allowance since he was ten, starting at five dollars per week and increasing steadily with inflation and age up to its current twenty dollars.

Lexie was used to people wanting her opinion, to the point where she often assumed they did and just hadn’t quite said so.

good fucking Lord

Most of the girls wore skimpy dresses and hats or animal ears,

mean girls reference?

Mrs. Richardson felt a twinge of irritation at this lukewarm response to her philanthropy.

truly, a mother Teresa lol

She had learned that when people were bent on doing something they believed was a good deed, it was usually impossible to dissuade them.

of course she still donated to charity and voted Democrat, but so many years of comfortable suburban living had changed both of them.

Something inside Izzy reached out to something in her and caught fire.

she’d never touched anyone and felt that warmth, that electric tension at the nearness of someone else. The only thing that had given her that feeling had been art—and then, of course, Pearl.

Mia on the ace spectrum?