Story for the Week
The running joke when I was a kid was that I was the last kid left in the nursery, and my parents had gone to the hospital to have a baby, so they had to take me home. I’ve heard my birth story a number of times, so it definitely wasn’t true. But it was the joke used to explain why I was so different from the rest of my family.
I can definitely see the resemblance to my parents now, but when I was younger, it was harder to see. Obviously, kids change over time. When Corinne was a baby, she was the spitting image of her dad, so much so that the nurses at the doctor’s office used to joke it was a good thing I carried her because they would never believe she was mine otherwise. As she’s gotten older, I can see both of us in her features, but when she was small…she was all Dennis.
From a personality perspective, I couldn’t have been more different from my siblings. For starters, I loved school, and I’m not exaggerating when I say love. My first day of kindergarten, I cried when the bus didn’t show up and my dad had to drive me. I remember every teacher I had in grade school (Fisher, Spanos, Augustus/Pierce, Lorenz, Lorenz, Wier). I enjoyed homework (go ahead and call me a nerd…I can take it). The fact that I never did quite grasp diagramming sentences in fourth grade devastated me (the F on the first assignment didn’t help).
In middle school, which we called junior high back in the day 🤣, I worked on the yearbook. By the time I started high school, I knew I would major in journalism in college. And I worked on both the yearbook and the newspaper in high school. (My sister worked on the newspaper as well but did not major in journalism.) I never…ever…thought about changing my major, so the fact that I don’t work in journalism is a story for another post (The Best Laid Plans….). My siblings were not so set on a course of study for themselves.
Both of my siblings met the love of their life and settled down after a decent-sized wedding in their 20s. I eloped at the ripe old age of 36 after meeting my husband in an online chat room.
And no shock to anyone, I am a voracious reader. My sister is more of a reader now as an adult, but when we were younger, neither of my siblings did much reading for pleasure. But I had a book with me no matter where we were.
When we visited my maternal grandmother and the rest of the family would gather in the kitchen to play poker, I would be on the couch in the living room with a book. I vividly remember escaping the stress of my paternal grandfather’s wake with a book in the lobby of the funeral home. My brother-in-law needed a ride to the DMV once and knew it would be a long wait. He worried that I would get bored. I informed him that a reader will never be bored.
All this to say that every family has its idiosyncrasies and probably someone who is a little bit of an oddball compared to the rest of the family. I fully embrace the oddball factor. The family in the book reviewed below had its own oddball in Izzy…but she wasn’t the only one who was more than a little bit off.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
368 pages
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication Date: September 12, 2017
Purchased on Amazon.
Publisher’s Description
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.
************
Main Characters:
- Mr. and Mrs. Richardson – wealthy parents of four children in Shaker Heights, Mrs. Richardson grew up in Shaker Heights, they met in college and returned to Shaker Heights after getting married, Mrs. Richardson writes for the local newspaper and manages their rental property, Mr. Richardson works as a defense attorney
- Mia – 36-year-old mother to Pearl, works as an artist, they move whenever Mia finishes an art project and seeks new inspiration, picks up odd jobs to make extra money and sells pieces through an art dealer in New York when they need money
- Pearl – only child of Mia, sophomore in high school, she’s a good student taking a number of advanced classes
- Lexie – the Richardsons’ oldest child, a senior in high school, heavily involved in theater
- Trip – the Richardsons’ second child, a junior in high school, an athlete and a bit of a player, Pearl has a crush on him
- Moody – the Richardsons’ third child, a sophomore in high school, has a lot of classes with Pearl and has a crush on her
- Izzy – the Richardsons’ youngest child, a freshman in high school, the black sheep of the family, develops an attachment to Mia and starts helping with her art
- Mr. and Mrs. McCullough – friends of the Richardsons, in the process of adopting a Chinese-American baby who was left at a fire station, Mrs. McCullough and Mrs. Richardson grew up together
I loved this book and will definitely be adding Celeste Ng to my must-read list. I purchased this 2017 release on Amazon last November. I typically remember why I add books to my TBR list. I think someone from work recommended it, but whoever that was, thank you!
The author hails from Shaker Heights, Ohio, which is where the story takes place. “In Shaker Heights there was a plan for everything. When the city had been laid out in 1912—one of the first planned communities in the nation—schools had been situated so that all children could walk without crossing a major street; side streets fed into major boulevards, with strategically placed rapid-transit stops to ferry commuters into downtown Cleveland. In fact, the city’s motto was… ‘Most communities just happen; the best are planned’: the underlying philosophy being that everything could—and should—be planned out, and that by doing so you could avoid the unseemly, the unpleasant, and the disastrous.”
Elena Richardson views herself as the embodiment of the Shaker Heights ideology. Follow the plan and follow the rules. After college, she and her husband moved back to her hometown of Shaker Heights. They had four children, one after the other. She inherited her family home from her parents and rents out the upstairs and downstairs separately. Rent is minimal and used for the Richardson vacation account because she and her husband don’t need the money. She just wants to provide deserving people with an opportunity to get ahead.
Enter Mia and Pearl Warren, a single mother and her teenage daughter. Mia is a nomadic artist who moves when she feels the need for new inspiration. She and Pearl have lived a minimalist life all over the country, but Mia has promised Pearl that this time, they will put down roots.
When the Richardsons’ third child Moody discovers that one of the new tenants is the same age and will be in many of his classes, curiosity gets the best of him. He bikes over to the house while Mia and Pearl are moving in. None of the Richardson children have ever bothered with the rental property before, but Moody and Pearl become fast friends, and gradually Pearl becomes a constant presence in the Richardson home.
For the first time, the Richardson teens start to understand that not everyone has their “perfect” life. Moody, for example, has never thought about family finances until he starts talking to Pearl about why they have so little in the way of possessions and how they manage their expenses. Lexie seems to take Pearl under her wing since her own sister, Izzy, is a bit of a black sheep. Trip appears to enjoy the attention he gets from Pearl. And Izzy finds herself drawn to Mia, who is so different from her own mother.
This story is thought-provoking in so many ways. It spans Mia’s past and present, deals with her relationship with her own family and how it colors her relationships in the present day. As readers, we know there’s something about Mia’s past that she keeps private, and I had a lot of guesses that were way off base. She and Pearl have an amazing relationship, but as Pearl grows closer to the Richardsons, we see fractures between her and Mia because of things Pearl doesn’t know.
And then there’s Mrs. Richardson who sticks her nose very prominently where it does not belong, making wrong assumption after wrong assumption…as I did. Mrs. Richardson acts on those wrong assumptions by digging into Mia’s past. At the same time, her children draw closer to both Pearl and Mia and realize that the life of privilege they enjoy is not the way the world works outside of Shaker Heights. Mia’s is a life of whimsy and spontaneity, which is pretty much the antithesis of their own lives. When the town becomes divided over the adoption of a Chinese-American baby by a white Shaker Heights couple who happen to be friends with the Richardsons, even the teens become divided in their opinions.
There is a lot to unpack in this story, and Ng’s execution felt flawless. One of the things that impressed me the most about her writing was her ability to portray a character’s personality in the narration. Mrs. Richardson believes herself to be open and accepting, but it feels more like a personality she puts on because it’s expected. In reality, she feels like she’s better than those who don’t act the same. When the story focuses on Mrs. Richardson, you can feel that attitude coming off of her.
“She had been brought up to follow rules, to believe that the proper functioning of the world depended on her compliance, and follow them—and believe—she did. She had had a plan, from girlhood on, and had followed it scrupulously: high school, college, boyfriend, marriage, job, mortgage, children. A sedan with air bags and automatic seat belts. A lawn mower and a snowblower. A matching washer and dryer. She had, in short, done everything right and she had built a good life, the kind of life she wanted, the kind of life everyone wanted. Now here was this Mia, a completely different kind of woman leading a completely different life, who seemed to make her own rules with no apologies.”
The fact that the narration refers to them as Mr. and Mrs. Richardson exemplifies their perceived stature in the community. They are “Bill and Elena” only to Mark and Linda McCullough, who are also referred to as Mr. and Mrs. McCullough throughout. However, Mia is never referred to as Ms. Warren. She doesn’t have status in Shaker Heights, and even though no one says it, we know that the life-long residents believe it…until the Richardson children start to spend time with her and Pearl and see how privileged (and unfair) their life is in comparison to their new friends.
What a well-written and provocative story. And the ending…just wow.
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