Brown Bag Book Discussion

Amy Erwin will lead a discussion of Celeste Ng's New York Times best-selling novel Everything I Never Told You. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to read the book in advance. Ask for a copy at the library’s information desk.

From Publisher's Weekly:

This emotionally involving debut novel explores themes of belonging using the story of the death of a teenage girl, Lydia, from a mixed-race family in 1970s Ohio.

Lydia is the middle and favorite child of Marilyn Walker, a white Virginian, and James Lee, a first-generation Chinese-American. Marilyn and James meet in 1957, when Marilyn is a pre-med student at Radcliffe and James, a graduate student, is teaching one of her classes. The two fall in love and marry over the objections of Marilyn’s mother, whose comment on their interracial relationship is succinct: “It’s not right.” Marilyn gets pregnant and gives up her dream of becoming a doctor, devoting her life instead to raising Lydia and the couple’s other two children, Nathan and Hannah. Then Marilyn abruptly moves out of their suburban Ohio home to go back to school, only to return before long.

When Lydia is discovered dead in a nearby lake, the family begins to fall apart. As the police try to decipher the mystery of Lydia’s death, her family realizes that they didn’t know her at all.

Lydia is remarkably imagined, her unhappy teenage life crafted without an ounce of cliché. Ng’s prose is precise and sensitive, her characters richly drawn.

Accolades: 2015 Alex Award winner, 2014 Booklist Editors' Choice: Best Fiction, Massachusett's Book Award: Fiction Award, 2014 NYT Notable Book: Fiction