blog

Jul 5, 2019 mini book reviews books

Mini Book Review: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

So I’ve decided to occasionally review books… here we go, I guess:

Little Fires Everywhere first somehow flashes its story in your face, letting you catch a glimpse of what’s already happened. But the scene is soon shrouded in darkness again, leaving a negative imprint on your eyes and an innumerable amount of questions in your head. From there, Celeste Ng somehow paints an incredibly vivid picture of a heartwrenching struggle over a single child, upon which the 1970s-suburban ideals of Shaker Heights (which, by the way, is a real place and still exists) somehow stand and are pitted against the the reality of inevitable entropy… and reality itself, in which relationships, despite every bureaucratic effort to pin them apart, wind up tangled and hopelessly intertwined. Every pull on the strings only tightens the knots.

The book contains a story woven from plain thread into a colorful fabric, but the resulting textile is then ripped in half, after which its fragments are left to burn. It’s simultaneously mind-boggling, captivating, optimistic, and then hopeless. A house of cards is conjured from a messy deck, reaching higher and higher with the utmost precision and perfection - but a single misplaced juncture is tucked in the middle; no one notices, but a slight breeze soon rounds the corner… everything falls apart. That’s what this book is like. It’s all wonderful and beautiful, but then you realize that something must not be right, except before you have a chance to discern what dark cloud might be hanging overhead, everything collapses, the downpour starts, and lightning strikes in the form of Izzy. There will have been a million things that could’ve gone differently - in other universes, everyone would’ve lived happily ever after, but you’ll be left questioning why all the wrong things lined up in this one.

The answer, at least to me, is still unclear. I think it must exist somewhere. Answers, in general, are very prone to tangles.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng - 10/10