Staff Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You, a 2014 novel that has garnered a long list of highly favorable reviews, awards, and other accolades, delivers a punch in its very first line: “Lydia is dead.” Lydia is Lydia Lee, the favored middle child of a mixed-race couple. Her father, James, a college professor, is American born of Asian descent, and her mother, Marilyn, a wannabe doctor who wound up a housewife, is white. Both parents dote on teenaged Lydia while also burdening her with the relentless expectation that she will fulfill all their own unmet dreams and needs.  Marilyn intends for Lydia to become a doctor, while James wants her to be popular and pretty.

The book opens with Lydia’s disappearance and subsequent discovery at the bottom of a lake near her Ohio home. Upon this tragic foundation, Celeste Ng builds an intricate structure of aftermath and backstory, deftly weaving characters and events spanning twenty years, from the 1950s to the 1970s, into a tight and increasingly oppressive and dysfunctional framework. The story's perspective shifts among family members in alternating chapters.

The big question, of course, is “What happened!!??” How did their beloved daughter drown? Was it foul play? Suicide? Some horrible accident?  We don’t find out until the end of the book. The author lays a trail of hints, clues, and suspects, one possible culprit being the wild and unsupervised son of a local divorcee, who was among the last to see Lydia alive.

Ng’s writing is fine and evocative, the societal circumstances she describes timely and fresh: the bigotry faced by Asians in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. We are now so accustomed to thinking of academic excellence, the surging Chinese economy, and the distinctly Asian flavor to our more multicultural cities, that it surprised me to realize that even educated, professional, American-born Chinese faced terrible discrimination (exacerbated in part by the Vietnam War) in so recent a past.

Ng excels at crafting sentences and at building (and resolving) an intricate plot. It is in the family dynamics she creates that I found my credulity stretched. Why is Lydia so favored, yet her older brother, Nath, an ardently-aspiring astronomer, elicits only rage or indifference from his parents? How can any parents consistently ignore a child, as the Lees do their youngest, Hannah? How could Marilyn abandon her family for months, not even leaving a note, in an early, aborted attempt to complete her education?  Is it the parents’ favoritism that causes the siblings to turn on each other?

These questions pile up and as they did, I found myself liking the Lees less and less -- every one of them -- and unlikeable characters make for a less compelling story. The more I read the novel, the more I wanted to flee its characters. But, reading through the reviews, it appears my reaction constitutes a minority view. Read the book for yourself and see what you think!

 ~ Ann, Adult Services

Staff Review: The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle by Dave Eggers centers on a recent college graduate (presumably in the near future) named Mae, who is lucky enough to land a job working for a company called The Circle. It is a company that bears many similarities to the Silicon Valley corporations we know: a cutting-edge innovator of all the latest in practically everything, headed by a trio of genius personalities. The story follows not only Mae's work life, but also her relationships with her parents and friends, her love life, and her personal thoughts and desires. She feels extremely privileged to be working at The Circle and is determined to shine in its glamorous and fast-paced environment. She is not a particularly remarkable character, but is relatable and sympathetic, and her situation is intriguing enough to want to follow. Early on in the story, I found myself rooting for Mae in her new job, cringing at her mistakes and cheering when she recovered gracefully and received small promotions and praise.

As I read, I often got the feeling that the culture in The Circle is different than the American culture I know, in subtle ways I couldn't quite put my finger on. The culture of Mae's family and other characters living outside The Circle does indeed seem mundane, exactly like the one we live in, with nothing different or exciting. Within The Circle, however, the degree to which everyone reveres information, feedback and social media etiquette, while inspiring at first, becomes disconcerting and frustrating. I was annoyed by and dismissive of characters who blindly value "smiles" (akin to liking something on Facebook) from strangers and extreme transparency. These characters became harder to dismiss, however, as it became more difficult for me to identify why they made me uncomfortable. Mae assimilates faster and faster to her new culture, but I struggled more with each page to answer questions Mae does not seem to stop and ask.

Before reading The Circle, I had heard mixed reviews of it. A few said it is profound with ominous overtones, but many others found it to be mundane, even boring. After finishing the book, I somehow felt that both of these opinions ring true. While the characters were often maddening and lack complexity, the questions raised in The Circle are pointed, relevant and sometimes disturbing questions that I am unable to stop thinking about.

~Rachel, Technical Services

Staff Review: Welcome to Utopia: notes from a small town by Karen Valby

Welcome to Utopia: notes from a small town by Karen Valby 

My reading tastes include many genres, and I move amongst them as the spirit moves me. While I do enjoy non-fiction (especially about chefs or cooking), I sometimes find it much “heavier” to read than fiction. It often takes me longer to get through a non-fiction book.Sometimes, though, I will stumble across a narrative non-fiction title - non-fiction that reads just like fiction. These books are fun finds because they combine the topics of non-fiction with the easy reading of fiction. Welcome to Utopia is one such book that falls into this category.

Beginning in 2006, Karen Valby, a senior writer for Entertainment Weekly, found Utopia, Texas for an article about popular culture deserts. Utopia is a small town (population 241) an hour away from the closest city and barely touched by the influence of pop culture. She was so intrigued by the town that after completing the article she returned to learn more about four specific residents. Their stories are this book.

The featured Utopians are different ages, races, and genders and, most intriguingly, have different feelings about life in Utopia. Anyone who has ever complained their hometown had nothing to do will think twice after learning about this place! Thanks to Valby’s writing style it is easy to get pulled into the four stories told in alternating chapters. One forgets that it is non-fiction and that these people and their lives and their town are all real. 

~Emily, Adult Services