Everything I Never Told You

Ng, C. (2014). Everything I never told you. Westminster, London: Penguins Press.

 The Lees are a middle class family from Ohio.  One morning as the family sits down for breakfast, they realize Lydia is missing.  She is found dead at the bottom of a lake nearby their house. Her death is ruled a suicide and to answer the reader’s questions the author goes back to the 60’s to recount the events leading up to her suicide.  Her father is Chinese American and is a young professor at Harvard.  There he meets his wife, Marilyn, and she becomes pregnant with her first child Nath.  She leave medical studies at Harvard to become a housewife.  When Lydia was 6 years old, Marilyn leaves her family to go back to medical school, soon after she leave she realizes she is pregnant with her third child, Hannah, so she goes back home.  When she returns, she starts to live her dream of becoming a doctor through Lydia. Putting the other children to the side, both parents focus on Lydia becoming what they never where.  Lydia becomes extremely overwhelmed. Never feeling like he fit in, James has an affair with Louisa, another Chinese women.  This affair goes on for a while. Lydia starts to suspect that her father is having an affair.  Lydia not having any friends, befriends her neighbor Jack, who is in love with Nath her brother.  The night before she died, she tried to kiss Jack and he rejected her telling her he was in love with Nath.  All these events, led her to commit suicide.  After her death, her family discovers things about Lydia that they did not know about.  In the end, James comes home to Marilyn and they both start to renew their love for each other.  At the end, Nath and Jack have a fight and Hannah accidently pushes him in the lake.  While he is down there, he feels a connection with Lydia and swims back.   The appropriate age group for this book would be high school students from the age of 14-18.  I feel like this story is something that young adults can relate too.  Young adults not only have peer pressure, but this book show how parents put pressure on their children as well.  The family dynamics in this story are reality for some children today. As a teacher, you can discuss how seeking help can help you and that suicide is the answer to someone’s problems.  This story is contemporary realistic novel.  It deals with family issues like maternal expectations, sibling conflict, and interracial marriage.  The plot is very well written with developed characters.  They style which the author used to write this story is frequently lyrical and have rhythm and poetic quality.  The characters’ thoughts are italicized to separate them from each other.