{"id":2266,"date":"2016-11-12T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T21:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2266"},"modified":"2016-11-12T13:42:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-12T21:42:00","slug":"review-everything-i-never-told-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2266","title":{"rendered":"Review: Everything I Never Told You"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more I turn this book over in my mind, the more I admire it.<\/p>\n

In Everything I Never Told You<\/em>, Celeste Ng has created an intricate and polished depiction of tragic events in a claustrophobic and contracting family sphere. Every time I consider another angle – themes, tone, iconography, historical context – I’m impressed by the care and sophistication of the work.<\/p>\n

Tonally it reverberated with Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye<\/em> and Stephen Dobyn’s Church Of The Dead Girls<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 They share the sense of a series of moments that illuminate a lingering initial image in a cloistered world.\u00a0 Ng brings that seeping revelatory technique to a family in small town Ohio pre-1980.\u00a0 I feel the echoes of those other works but Everything<\/em> is distinct.<\/p>\n

The plot and characters all mesh intricately and organically.\u00a0 It opens with a tragedy and oozes outward, though Everything<\/em> is not a mystery. The puzzle frames the ideas rather than being the end.\u00a0 That’s true of well-crafted mysteries as well – and I cast no shade on the genre – but Everything<\/em>‘s world is messier and earthier than most genre settings. Different readers will come to different conclusions about the family here, yet the motivations and themes are clear and complex.<\/p>\n

In addition to its literary power, Ng connects her plot and characters into a world that is simultaneously realistic and nostalgic.\u00a0 One can feel the nods toward popular culture and the care given to accuracy. Those can be at odds, and Ng chooses the cultural iconography and historical themes well.\u00a0 even things that feel incidental often become more illuminating on reflection.<\/p>\n

The narrative incorporates more traditional literary iconography as well. Ng does the tricky work of balancing her characters’ realism and structural roles with uncommon skill.\u00a0 Symbolism that might be too on the nose in a similar plot almost snuck up on me here.<\/p>\n

It’s also a compelling read.\u00a0 I’d like to say it’s a fun read, but that’s false.\u00a0 The experience is a lot like my idea of wrestling a boa constrictor.\u00a0 Everything about the novel becomes more claustrophobic and urgent as the narrative catches up to the climax from multiple angles.\u00a0 As the book goes on and the characters grow more defined, individual scenes seamlessly jump between points of view.\u00a0 That results in a sense of simultaneous disorientation and intensity.\u00a0 Other techniques are deployed with similar virtuosity.<\/p>\n

Overall, it’s a deep powerful novel.<\/p>\n

A must.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more I turn this book over in my mind, the more I admire it. In Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng has created an intricate and polished depiction of tragic events in a claustrophobic and contracting family sphere. Every time I consider another angle – themes, tone, iconography, historical context – I’m impressed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2269,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions\/2269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}