Book Review: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

 

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is when I feel the Goodreads rating system doesn't do books justice... I didn't particularly like this book... But I didn't particularly dislike it. It's well written enough to deserve more than two stars... A few thoughts, and I'll note that some of my general comments do give spoilers of things that are surprises in the book (so read with caution) though I try not to give away specifics or anything you might not suspect as you read along:

1. I read this book because, as someone who has practiced adoption law for 21 years, I am always interested in reading depictions of adoption in popular fiction. (I also read a fair bit of nonfiction about adoption.) Interestingly, this book also briefly touches on the issue of assisted reproductive technologies, which is less common. Adoption subplots pop up pretty frequently, but I find ART depicted far less often. Ng pretty effectively illustrates why the type of surrogacy in the book is just not done any more. With regard to the adoption subplot, there are, of course, many adoption stories and many different types of people who pursue adoption, but I thought the depiction of the McCulloughs was fair and accurately depicted the views of a critical number of adoptive families with whom I have worked over two decades. I will say that, while I understood the outcome of the court proceedings in terms of the book's plot, I do think that the outcome is extremely unlikely given the specific facts set out in the book. IRL, May Ling-Mirabelle would've very likely been going home with a different person following that court proceeding. That said, I did not have the response I have had to some books dealing with adoption - frustration that the writer didn't do their homework. Ng does a good job.

2. Ng created a book with strong critical undertones for white supremacist culture in the US without beating readers over the head with it. I kinda wish she had been more overt, but I thought that the way she depicts the Richardson family accurately shows the conflicting tensions, assumptions, prejudices, and aspirations of progressive white upper class people. They may not personally be "bad," but they are (WE are) invested in system that prioritizes our experiences and blinds us to ways our lives benefit from that priority and deafens us to the way the system tramples on the rights of others. I appreciated this aspect of the book - some things to think about here for sure.

3. I hated the very end and felt it was inconsistent with the omniscient narrator approach in the rest of the book. I did like that the end circled back around to the beginning, but I did not like being left hanging. There were so many times in the book that we knew things that the characters didn't know. (Ng was very direct about this in a few places, like when talking about what Ms. McCullough assumes about Bebe's illness and what is actually going on with Bebe.) Then we get to the end... It didn't leave me thinking and wondering. It left me frustrated.





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