Everything I Never Told You

2016 Longlist

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

(from publisher)

About the Author

Celste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, was a New York Times bestseller, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, a New York Times Notable Book, and on the Best Book of the Year lists of over a dozen outlets. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.

Librarian’s Comments

Summer, 1977. Teenager Lydia Lee, gone, dead, nobody knows this yet. Secrets unfold in a small town – a diary, mixed marriage, identity crisis and alienation are subtly woven into superb storytelling. Ng masterfully shifts the narrative between family theories and Lydia’s own story, fervently portraying the experience of mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggling to understand each other.