BotM Dec. "Little Fires Everywhere" Celeste Ng

[Cheryl]

Little Fires Everywhere is a hugely popular book club selection. If you want to listen to it on downloadable audio, you'll have to place your hold now and you still might not get it by the time of the meeting, Dec 28, Saturday, 2 pm.

[Cheryl]

But come to the meeting anyway! Munchies and conversation!

[Cheryl]

Omg. Halfway through and if I weren't reading this for group I'd've thrown it far away already. Tell tell tell. I feel like I'm reading a summary of the book told by someone who doesn't know what a summary is, that's it's supposed to be shorter than the book.

Also it reminds me a lot of Night Road, another book for this group.

Melodrama. No nuance. No subtlety. Characters are cliches. That poor teacher at school - yes, there's no excuse for what she did that ticked Izzy off, but she's a person with her own problems, too, not just a bully. I expect more from a book for adults... even books for MG kids have more well-rounded characters.

Granted I'm not done. But I have no doubt that I can see where this is going. If Izzy is indeed the one who set the fires I'm going to be surprised.

[Cheryl]

Still, lots to talk about.

Should the Chinese baby be kept by her white adoptive parents, or should her poor but now stable biological mother get her back?

Or, here's an idea, shouldn't all three adults act like adults and cooperate to raise her?!

[Cheryl]

Ok done. The story does get more interesting in some ways. But also more melodramatic. And there are more things to talk about.

Pauline, Mia's mentor, has as one of her mottoes, "Nothing is an accident." Compare that to Elena Richardson's drive to plan and control everything, to effectively try to deny the existence of accidents.

[Cheryl]

The ending is, erm, interesting. Unexpected. And really quite out there... contrived into a semblance of plausibility.