February 2021: Little Fires Everywhere (Ng)

Post date: Mar 15, 2021 2:52:5 AM

Selecting readings for a group like ours is tricky. We want books that our members will like and find interesting; however, our best discussions often result when several members have negative reactions to the material. This was the case with Celeste Ng’s popular novel Little Fires Everywhere. Although well-written and meticulously crafted, Ng’s novel split our group down the middle. About half of us enjoyed the novel and about half found it left them cold. Fortunately, both sides found plenty to talk about in explaining their reactions.

Set in the late 1990’s in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Ng’s novel is a story of mothers and their relationships to their children and to each other. The main characters are Elena Richardson, a well-respected and wealthy mother of four teen-aged children who is an established leader in the community, and Mia Warren, an artist who leads a nomadic life with her daughter Pearl, moving from town to town in pursuit of creative inspiration. When Elena rents a house to Mia, Elena’s children befriend Pearl, and the two families become increasingly entwined until a crisis in the community sets them at odds with one another.

It is not surprising that Ng’s novel was used as the basis for a television series. Its plot moves along steadily and is full of action. One of our members noted that it had the feel of a Greek tragedy. Characters have abortions, act as surrogates, abandon children and adopt them. The teenagers fall in and out of love, chaff at the written and unwritten rules that govern their well-ordered community, and struggle to craft their own adult identities through allegiances with, and rebellions against, one another and their parents. These events invite us to explore the way race, class, and culture shape lives in suburban America and to muse over what children really need to grow and thrive. How important are the biological and cultural connections between parents and children? How essential are love, financial security, and stability? Do security and a sense of belonging encourage or impede freedom and creativity?

To negotiate all these issues, Ng creates complicated characters with complex motives. There is plenty of room for nuance here, and it is not always clear who is in the right and who in the wrong. (I’ve heard that the tv show lacks some of this subtlety.) Some of us really enjoyed this, since life is often messy and there rarely are true villains or heroes. However, others found it too hard to like any of the characters or to feel invested in their fates. Each character made at least one choice we could not fully understand or with which we could not sympathize. One member commented that this lack of connection left her feeling the book stayed on the surface of things, that it did not ring true, and that the characters never fully faced the consequences of their actions.

Another member objected to the setting of the novel in Shaker Heights. Having lived there for several years, she felt that Ng overstated the elitism and conservatism in this suburb of Cleveland. She felt it would have been better for Ng to have created a fictional setting for her book.

I suspect she is not the only past or current resident of that community who has issues with Ng’s novel. However, I can understand why Ng chose to set it in the city in which she grew up. Shaker Heights was designed to promote and preserve a certain vision of the American Dream. Founded in the early 1900’s by two railroad millionaires and designed as a garden-style suburb, the city’s development has been carefully controlled by strict building codes and zoning laws. As a result, three quarters of the city is on the National Register of Historic Places. The city’s efforts to support successful racial integration and to maintain racial diverse neighborhoods go back to the 1950’s. It would seem all issues can be addressed with the right combination of planning and control. However, as Ng’s novel illustrates, well-manicured lawns and well-maintained facades do little to prevent the disordered complexities inherent in human relationships. Our instincts to construct, create and preserve go hand in hand with, and may even depend on, our willingness to disrupt, destroy, and start again.