{"id":7362,"date":"2018-07-17T07:24:30","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T11:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7362"},"modified":"2018-07-17T07:24:30","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T11:24:30","slug":"comfortable-ambiguity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7362","title":{"rendered":"Comfortable Ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"pond\"

photo: Jill111, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Uh-oh. I have to lead a book group discussion today of Celeste Ng\u2019s debut novel, Everything I Never Told You<\/em>\u2014which I read and reviewed three years ago, and I can\u2019t find my copy of the book! And the library doesn\u2019t have one. I feel so unprepared. But at least I have this:<\/p>\n

In a perceptive Glimmer Train<\/em> essay, summarized here<\/a>, Celeste Ng talked about \u201ccomfortable ambiguity,\u201d and how in Everything I Never Told You<\/em>, she tried to give readers space to enter the world of the story and enough clues to come to their own conclusions about the fates of the characters. Since so many of her early readers had strong\u2014and differing\u2014opinions about what those fates were, her efforts were clearly successful. I\u2019m hoping my book club members came to different conclusions too. A lively discussion should ensue!<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve read this book, you\u2019ll recall that the story takes place in the 1970s and centers around a family living in a small town outside Cleveland (modeled on Ng\u2019s home town of Shaker Heights): honey-blonde Marilyn, the mother, estranged from her own mother, her would-be career, and the future she thought she would have; James, her Chinese husband in an era and a place where being Asian made him\u2014at least in his mind\u2014the perpetual outsider; and their three black-haired children, the only Asian-Americans in their school. Hannah, the acutely observant youngest, Nathan, the oldest, on his way to Harvard, and in the middle, Lydia\u2014serious, responsible Lydia\u2014her parents\u2019 favorite. Their hopes are pinned on her.<\/p>\n

But something goes <\/em>drastically wrong, as we learn in the book\u2019s first irrevocable sentences: \u201cLydia is dead. But they don\u2019t know this yet.\u201d In the aftermath of her daughter\u2019s disappearance, a desperate Marilyn finds the dozen diaries she\u2019s given Lydia to see what clues they may hide. She jams the flimsy locks open. Every page is blank.<\/p>\n

As the story\u2019s point of view shifts among family members, and each tries to piece together what happened to Lydia and why, the secrets, the alienation, and the deceptions in their own lives emerge. Even in this crisis, little is shared among them. Each must come to an understanding of Lydia\u2019s tragedy in a unique, highly personal, and for some, devastating way. In my experience the novel skillfully drew me into deeper and deeper waters until I realized the surface was far above. I will be interested to see whether the book group members are comfortable with its lack of a final clarifying answer.<\/p>\n

Everything I Never Told You<\/em> was a New York Times<\/em> Notable Book of the Year and named a \u201cbest book of the year\u201d by many reviewers. Ng\u2019s second book, the 2017 Little Fires Everywhere<\/em>, also delves into family secrets when a custody battle erupts in a \u201cprogressive\u201d Cleveland suburb (you-know-where) over the adoption of a Chinese-American baby. It\u2019s an exploration of race, class, and unconscious privilege that also received extravagant praise and is being turned into an eight-episode television series. Less ambiguity in the story here, but also less comfort.
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Uh-oh. I have to lead a book group discussion today of Celeste Ng\u2019s debut novel, Everything I Never Told You\u2014which I read and reviewed three years ago, and I can\u2019t find my copy of the book! And the library doesn\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Comfortable Ambiguity - do readers like it, or do you want answers? Celeste Ng's test.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[366,40,174,60,785],"tags":[797,1364,412,413],"class_list":["post-7362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-storytelling","category-tragedy","tag-celeste-ng","tag-everything-i-never-told-you","tag-mystery","tag-readers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1UK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7364,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7362\/revisions\/7364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}