My Thoughts On "Everything I Never Told You" and Discussion Questions

Over a year ago, my mom joined a book club, and I was intrigued and interested in joining her, but the members weren't close to my age, and life got in the way.  A few months ago, my mom joined a SECOND book club (because apparently one wasn't enough for her).  Last month, her second book club read one of her favorite books (Before We Were Yours), and she really pushed for me to read the book and come with her (it helped that it was being hosted at one of my favorite restaurants).  Well, the book seemed interesting enough, and I wanted to get my mom off my back, so I gave in.  I honestly had a blast!  This book club had a wide range of people from my age to my mom's, they actually talked about the book, and the book choices were excellent.  Needless to say, now I'm part of a book club.

I've been part of book clubs in the past.  In middle school I went to one at the local library with a friend.  After college, my best friend tried to start one up, but it mostly was an excuse for us to get together once a month and hang out.  A little while before I met my boyfriend I tried one at the local library again but wasn't a fan (most of the people were significantly older than me, and I was looking for people my age).  So, after all these experiences, I'm glad to have found a book club I actually enjoy.

I guess at this point you may have figured out that this month's book for book club was Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, which is why I started out this post talking about my past experiences with book clubs and my general thoughts on them.  Now that that's out of the way, I can actually talk about the book.  I do want to warn you that this book is difficult to talk about without giving away spoilers (although what book is?).  So, if you haven't read the book and want to avoid spoilers, you won't want to read the entire post below.  I'll post a warning before I get into the spoilers (trust me, it'll be hard to miss).

Everything I Never Told You focuses on the Lee family, a bi-racial Chinese family living in Ohio in the 1970s.  While the main focus of the book is the death of their oldest daughter, Lydia, the book also uses flashbacks to give the reader insight into the family and how things were not as they appeared, while in the present, the family attempts to grapple with the death of Lydia and try to figure out what exactly happened to her in the first place.

First things first, it's important to note that this family is absolutely miserable.  The dad, who is the son of Chinese immigrants, is entirely focused on his children fitting in and being just like everyone else.  This means getting them the latest fads when it comes to clothes, buying books for them about how to make friends and focusing entirely on their social lives.  The mother, on the other hand, is American.  She was the top of her class and poised to go to medical school when she got pregnant and had to put all her dreams on hold.  Due to this, she decided to live vicariously through her children, or, more correctly, her oldest daughter, Lydia.  This meant that their oldest child, Nathan, was often looked over and forgotten.  This was something I found interesting, as most of the time the families focus on the oldest son, not the daughter.  This most likely stemmed from the mother's obsession with being a female doctor, and her desire to see the same for her son.  Not to mention, getting pregnant with her son was the reason she couldn't go to medical school in the first place.

As if this family weren't dysfunctional enough as is, they also had a younger daughter, Hannah.  Like her brother, Nathan, Hannah was completely unplanned and put a kibosh on her mother's plans to return to medical school.  As a result, Hannah is completely and utterly forgotten by everyone in the family, which only adds to the dysfunction.

Now, if you've made it this far and want to avoid spoilers, this is where you want to stop reading.  Even the discussion questions I post may have some spoilers, so read those at your own risk.

I'm a little strange, sometimes I can see a plot twist coming a mile away, sometimes I see it right before it happens, and sometimes I'm completely blindsided.  In the case of this book, I definitely saw it coming.  I figured that Lydia committed suicide (although it's up to interpretation if it was in fact suicide or an accident) simply because of the focus of the book.  Everything I Never Told You is more focused on the family aspect, with the police investigating her case only making brief cameos every once in a while.  This alone was a dead giveaway.  Ng focused more on the family and the events leading up to Lydia's death, telling the reader that whatever caused Lydia's death had to be somehow related to all of that instead of and outside person coming in and doing harm to Lydia.  The way Ng writes it, however, it makes it look more like it was an accident, although Lydia rowed a boat to the middle of the lake and got in the water in the middle of the night even though she knew she couldn't swim at all.  This causes the reader to wonder if she really meant to make it back to shore, or was it suicide?  I guess we'll never know.

Like I said before, I read this book for a book club.  While I did look at some discussion questions posted online, I also came up with a few of my own that I wanted to pass along in case this is a book you us for you own book club.  Please feel free to use or modify them to meet your needs!

1. Do you think Lydia really intended to make it to the dock or was it suicide?
2. Do you think Lydia's death was actually better for the family by bringing them closer together?
3. Had Lydia reached the dock, would she have actually carried out her plans to reclaim her life?
4. Why was Lydia chosen as the golden child instead of Nath?
5. What was Hannah's role in the novel?
6. How did James and Marilyn's childhoods affect their children?
7. Could better communication have saved Lydia?

Enjoy the book and let me know what you think in a comment!