Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the novels Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages.
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Time Out NY’s 10 Best Books of 2014 – #10
O Magazine’s 15 Must Read Literature & Fiction Books of the Year So
Far, #4
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Alexander Chee, The New York Times Book Review:
“If we know this story, we haven’t seen it yet in American fiction,
not until now… Ng has set two tasks in this novel’s doubled
heart—to be exciting, and to tell a story bigger than whatever is
behind the crime. She does both by turning the nest of familial
resentments into at least four smaller, prickly mysteries full of
secrets the family members won’t share… What emerges is a deep,
heartfelt portrait of a family struggling with its place in
history, and a young woman hoping to be the fulfillment of that
struggle. This is, in the end, a novel about the burden of being
the first of your kind—a burden you do not always survive.”
Los Angeles Times:
“Excellent…an accomplished debut… heart-wrenching…Ng deftly pulls
together the strands of this complex, multigenerational novel.
Everything I Never Told You is an engaging work that casts a
powerful light on the secrets that have kept an American family
together—and that finally end up tearing it apart.”
Boston Globe:
“Wonderfully moving…Emotionally precise…A beautifully crafted study
of dysfunction and grief…[This book] will resonate with anyone who
has ever had a family drama.”
San Francisco Chronicle:
“A subtle meditation on gender, race and the weight of one
generation’s unfulfilled ambitions upon the shoulders—and in the
heads—of the next… Ng deftly and convincingly illustrates the
degree to which some miscommunications can never quite
be rectified.”
O, The Oprah Magazine:
“Cleverly crafted, emotionally perceptive… Ng sensitively
dramatizes issues of gender and race that lie at the heart of the
story… Ng’s themes of assimilation are themselves deftly interlaced
into a taut tale of ever deepening and quickening
suspense.”
Los Angeles Review of Books:
“Ng moves gracefully back and forth in time, into the aftermath of
the tragedy as well as the distant past, and into the consciousness
of each member of the family, creating a series of mysteries and
revelations that lead back to the original question: what happened
to Lydia?...Ng is masterful in her use of the omniscient narrator,
achieving both a historical distance and visceral intimacy with
each character’s struggles and failures…On the surface, Ng’s
storylines are nothing new. There is a mysterious death, a family
pulled apart by misunderstanding and grief, a struggle to fit into
the norms of society, yet in the weaving of these threads she
creates a work of ambitious complexity. In the end, this novel
movingly portrays the burden of difference at a time when
difference had no cultural value…Compelling.”
Entertainment Weekly:
“Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a
mixed-race family, Ng’s explosive debut chronicles the plight of
Marilyn and James Lee after their favored daughter is found dead in
a lake.”
Marie Claire:
“The mysterious circumstances of 16-year-old Lydia Lee’s tragic
death have her loved ones wondering how, exactly, she spent her
free time. This ghostly debut novel calls to mind The Lovely
Bones.”
Huffington Post:
“A powerhouse of a debut novel, a literary mystery crafted out of
shimmering prose and precise, painful observation about racial
barriers, the burden of familial expectations, and the basic human
thirst for belonging… Ng’s novel grips readers from page one with
the hope of unraveling the mystery behind Lydia’s death—and boy
does it deliver, on every front.”
Chris Schluep, Parade:
“The first chapter of Celeste Ng’s debut novel is difficult—the
oldest daughter in a family is dead—but what follows is a
brilliantly written, surprisingly uplifting exploration of striving
in the face of alienation and of the secrets we keep from others.
This could be my favorite novel of the year.”
Kevin Nguyen, Grantland:
“The emotional core of Celeste Ng’s debut is what sets it apart.
The different ways in which the Lee family handles Lydia’s death
create internal friction, and most impressive is the way Ng handles
racial politics. With a deft hand, she loads and unpacks the
implications of being the only Chinese American family in a small
town in Ohio.”
Cleveland Plain-Dealer:
“Beautiful and poignant…. deftly drawn….It’s hard to believe that
this is a debut novel for Celeste Ng. She tackles the themes of
family dynamics, gender and racial stereotyping, and the weight of
expectations, all with insight made more powerful through
understatement. She has an exact, sophisticated touch with her
prose. The sentences are straightforward. She evokes emotions
through devastatingly detailed observations.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune:
“Perceptive…a skillful and moving portrayal of a family in pain…It
is to Ng’s credit that it is sometimes difficult for the reader to
keep going; the pain and unhappiness is palpable. But it is true to
the Lees, and Ng tells all.”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
“Impressive… In its evocation of a time and place and society
largely gone but hardly forgotten, Everything I Never Told You
tells much that today’s reader should learn, ponder and
appreciate.”
The Missourian:
“Quiet and intense…A family drama that reveals its secrets slowly,
drawing you in."
Dallas Morning News:
“Powerful…[A] beautifully crafted story of a family in pain, and
the many reasons, personal and societal, that the Lees have lived
most of their lives as strangers to one another. Making us care so
deeply about her characters is Ng’s triumph.”
Ann Arbor Observer:
“Deeply moving…masterful…[Ng] doesn’t give her characters any easy
futures or her readers any false hope.”
MORE magazine:
“With the skill of a veteran heart surgeon…Ng writes of maternal
expectations, ingrained prejudice and sibling conflict in a culture
that has just begun to grapple with interracial marriage and
shifting gender roles.”
Time Out New York:
“[A] tender debut…The novel touches on the myriad paths grief may
take, the secrets everyone keeps and how much a tragedy can affect
relationships in a family.”
Sara Vilkomerson, Entertainment Weekly:
“When Lydia Lee, the favored daughter in a mixed-race family in
‘70s Ohio, turns up dead, the Lees’ delicate ecosystem is
destroyed. Her parents’ marriage unravels, her brother is consumed
by vengeance, and her sister—always an afterthought—hovers
nervously, knowing more than anyone realizes. Ng skillfully gathers
each thread of the tragedy, uncovering secrets and revealing
poignant answers. Grade: A-.”
Vogue.com:
“[A] moving tale… of daughters for whom cultural disconnect is but
the first challenge.”
Bustle:
“[A] haunting debut…Ng is a gifted storyteller but an even more
gifted character-builder…A powerful book about how those left
behind must learn to go on living.”
Amanda Nelson, Book Riot:
“On the surface, this is about a mixed-race Asian-American family
dealing with and trying to solve the mysterious death of their
favorite teenaged daughter in ‘70s Ohio (this isn’t a spoiler, it
happens in the first sentence). What it’s really about all the ways
we can be an ‘other’—in society, in our own marriages, in our jobs,
and to our parents or children. It’s also about pressure—the
pressure to be with people who are like ourselves, and to fit in,
and to be everything our parents want us to be. It’s about giving
up your career to become a wife and mother, and what that means and
doesn’t mean. It’s about dealing with prejudice. It’s about secrets
and happiness and misery, and all the things we never tell the
people we love. It’s about everything, is what I’m saying, and not
a single word is wasted or superfluous.”
Publishers Weekly (starred):
“This emotionally involving debut novel explores themes of
belonging using the story of the death of a teenage girl, Lydia,
from a mixed-race family in 1970s Ohio…Lydia is remarkably
imagined, her unhappy teenage life crafted without an ounce of
cliché. Ng’s prose is precise and sensitive, her characters richly
drawn.”
Library Journal (starred):
“Ng constructs a mesmerizing narrative that shrinks enormous issues
of race, prejudice, identity, and gender into the miniaturist
dynamics of a single family. A breathtaking triumph, reminiscent of
prophetic debuts by Ha Jin, Chang-rae Lee, and Chimamanda Adichie,
whose first titles matured into spectacular, continuing literary
legacies.”
Booklist (starred):
“Tantalizingly thrilling, Ng’s emotionally complex debut novel
captures the tension between cultures and generations with the deft
touch of a seasoned writer. Ng will be one to watch.”
Kirkus Reviews:
“Ng expertly explores and exposes the Lee family’s secrets… These
long-hidden, quietly explosive truths, weighted by issues of race
and gender, slowly bubble to the surface of Ng’s sensitive,
absorbing novel and reverberate long after its final page. Ng’s
emotionally complex debut novel sucks you in like a strong current
and holds you fast until its final secrets surface.”
Jesmyn Ward, National Book Award-winning author of Salvage the
Bones:
“Ng tells a story weighted by death and grief that is vital in all
the essential ways; these characters betray and love blindly and
are needy and accuse and forgive. They are achingly human, and Ng's
writing about them is tender and merciless all at once. At the same
time, her story is also about what it means to live in two worlds
at the same time, to be Asian and American, an insider and an
outsider, and Ng writes about all this and more with terrific
nuance.”
Uwem Akpan, #1 New York Times bestselling author
of Say You’re One of Them:
“I couldn’t stop reading Everything I Never Told You . . . the
writing is so smooth and keenly observed. The portrait of each
member of the Lee family, the exploration of their mixed-race
issues and the search for the killer of their sister and daughter,
Lydia, pulled at my heartstrings to the very end.”
Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply:
"Everything I Never Told You is a suspenseful and emotionally
complex literary mystery novel, which, weaving back and forth in
time, unlocks the secrets beneath the surface of family life.
Celeste Ng has written a compellingly tense and moving first
book."
Ru Freeman, author of On Sal Mal Lane and A Disobedient
Girl:
"Celeste Ng leavens the bridge between the disappearance of a young
girl, and the personal histories that precede it, with the larger
canvas issues of race and gender, without straying from the
riveting emotional territory that make up the cornerstones of
family: what is given, what is withheld, and what can never be
known. Lydia Lee is every parent's dream, fear, and devastation,
wholly loved, just as completely lost. It is impossible to resist
grieving alongside each one of these bereft, deeply realized
characters, for we live their lives, and their story becomes ours
from the first paragraph of this marvelous book."
Book Passage (Corte Madera, CA):
“More than a simple portrait of love and loss, this is a beautiful
and haunting story of a lost teenage girl attempting to discover
her own voice.”
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