“How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia’s mother and father, because of her mother’s and father’s mothers and fathers.”

Everything I Never Told You reveals the deep, dark secrets of a Chinese American family that led to the untimely death of the favorite child, Lydia. It explores the past and present of this family, the formation of the parents and how this affected their children quite strongly in the end. It is a study of the emotions, stereotypes, and pressures hidden within every family, and what happens when the cracks finally start to show.

I listened to this novel in a haze of sickness, so it’s hard to judge how I truly felt about this book because I spent most of my time listening to it hidden under covers and trying to work through the first sickness that kept me home from school in a while.

Everything I Never Told You is poignant and heartbreaking and fit the exact mood I was in at the time. It focus both on the individual family but also how this message and story can be applied to a larger group of people and families. It discusses heritage, the choice to ignore it or cater to it, the pressures put on children by their parents, and the cracks that can form in a marriage when honesty is lost. It is a extremely emotional story seeped in culture and it makes you question beliefs you may have had, to ponder bigger questions in life.

The story itself is quite beautifully written (and narrated) as it spins the tales of generations and histories, and it keeps you hooked and intrigued into the story of this family. However, this writing also makes the story feel quite slow, as the story ends up being one that unravels and reveals itself slowly, rather than in one explosive burst. That means the 292 pages of this book feel much longer, in the end.

The characters themselves are all quite interesting, especially the parents. From the perspective of the children only, we would have quickly grown to hate and blame all the family’s problems on the parents. However, since we’ve learned their histories, as well as that of their parents, we sympathize with the mistakes the parents have made in the upbringing of their children, as we know the pressures they faced from their own parents, society, and their own heavy dreams. However, you are still made to understand the flawed aspect of the parents, since we do still see the suffering of the children. It makes the story feel quite heavy, and it leaves you questioning how to feel about certain characters and events and actions.

Overall, I quite enjoyed Everything I Never Told You, for the story it told and the questions it made me think about. I’ll definitely be reading Ng’s other books!