Little Fires Everywhere

by Celeste Ng

race, Lex,” said Moody. “The only difference is who pretends not to.”

a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future

longed for all existed at once.

if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.

nostrils, like the first wisp of smoke from a far-off blaze.

wanted her! All that pain, all that guilt, those seven little ghosts—for Mrs. McCullough never forgot a single one—had,

Mia had never noticed before how many babies there were: they were everywhere, the city was simply crawling with them, the streets swarming with unabashed fecundity, and she felt a deep pang of pity for Madeline Ryan. Madeline

buds still balled in tight hard fists. She headed toward home, and Mia let her go.

if no one knew what to do in the face of such tragedy except to make the heaviest, heartiest, most prosaic dish they could, to give the bereaved something solid to hold on to. None

was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.

How did you weigh a mother’s love against the cost of raising a child?)

she would still know her own child, just as she would know herself, no matter how long it had been.