Litttle Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Students have been reading Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You for their summer reading assignment and her newest, LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, will be in our library soon.  Shaped by multiple narrators and filled with suspense, this new title received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal AND Publishers Weekly. The setting is the late 1990’s in an insular suburban community near Cleveland, Ohio called Shaker Heights where “there were rules, many rules, about what you could and could not do.” And the secrets abound, particularly amongst two sets of family members: Mia Warren and her teenage daughter, Pearl, newcomers who rent from society matron and investigative reporter wannabe, Elena Richardson. Elena and her lawyer husband have four teenage children: sons named Trip and Moody (both of whom are attracted to Pearl) and daughters Lexie and Izzy (both of whom turn to Mia as a confidante).

This is a book about dysfunctional family life and motherhood, about questionable decisions made for good reasons, about hasty assumptions, about privilege and getting what you want, about trust and betrayal, and about the many secrets we keep. Overall, readers (including teens) will find much to consider and debate, including the pros and cons of adoption for a baby with Asian heritage, the consequences of an abortion and premarital sex, and pressure from peers and parents. One character even explicitly reflects on the problem with rules: “they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things.  When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.” LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE is highly recommended.