Ponder: Little Fires Everywhere

I finished reading Little Fires Everywhere ©2017 by Celeste Ng a few weeks ago and I am sitting here struggling to write a blog post about it. I remember reading it through in one sitting so it was gripping. But whether I should attribute my lack of a lasting impression to the book or to my senior memory is debatable. The story is set in Shaker Heights, a planned community ingrained with enough laws, regulations, and social mores that it is perceived by most residents to be Utopian in nature. It is a racially integrated suburb with diverse income levels. Perhaps I find it difficult to a generate a synopsis of the book since the plot seemed secondary to me. The book opens with a family home engulfed in a raging fire, a dramatic scene one would anticipate for a climax, rather than an opening. It did draw me in, intrigued to learn if the presumed perpetrator was really the guilty party and why a fire had been set. It was indeed set and ruled to be arson as the book titled Little Fires Everywhere implies. But the heightened physical action did not continue, at least not at that intense level, and the tone of the book was not that of a whodunit.

 

Little Fires Everywhere became more a study in relationships, thought processes, and emotional journeys. As I turned the pages I delved deeper and deeper into understanding the characters. Celeste Ng's superb portrayal made each of them spring to life for me. Three family units form the main character set of the novel: 1) the Richardsons, a journalist mother, a lawyer father, with their two high school age daughters and two high school age sons, 2) Mia and Pearl Warren, a single artist mother and her high school age daughter and 3) the McCulloughs, a wealthy childless couple. Issues explored included mother and daughter friction, teenage sexuality, academics, career choices, cultural differences, racial biases, child abandonment, adoption, surrogacy, community involvement. I viewed this gamut of topics as another interpretation of "little fires everywhere".

From advertisements for the book, I knew in advance of reading it that one conflict would be controversy over the adoption of a Chinese baby girl by a Caucasian couple. A debate raged within the community over the necessity of raising the child with intimate knowledge of her own native culture. I also learned early on in the book that the eldest Richardson daughter had been dating a black classmate throughout her high school years with no inter-racial repercussions or biases. The Chinese baby was a culture issue; the inter-racial dating was a non-issue. Other than that, I did not see Little Fires Everywhere as a book about race. Skin color seemed irrelevant. Why do I bring up this topic?

This novel was made into a 2020 TV mini-series with eight episodes in its first season. In the first episode I was shocked when I saw the casting of the characters. Mia and Pearl were black. In my Caucasian mind, when I read the book, I defaulted to picturing all characters, unless specifically stated otherwise, to be white. The book had stated no race. I just assumed they were white. Race and its little innuendos within an accepting, integrated community became an issue in the TV version. I have watched the first two episodes and realized the mini-series has very little resemblance to the book. It deviates drastically from what I read and imagined, even in area beyond race. I do not know how far it will stray in the other six episodes. Do not expect to watch the mini-series as a substitute for the book.

But my deep surprise at the casting bothered me. Had I been that oblivious to the racial clues in the book? I googled other interpretations and found this March 31, 2020 article in The Atlantic. In it, the author Celeste Ng, who's Asian American, is quoted as saying

Initially, I had wanted to write [Mia and her daughter, Pearl] as people of color. I thought of them as people of color, because I knew I wanted to talk about race and class, and those things are so intertwined in our country and in our culture … But I didn’t feel like I was the right person to try to bring a black woman’s experience to the page.

So I wasn't that blind, after all, and I am vindicated for "missing" clues that were not in the novel. Race was not needed for this book to have controversies. Wealth disparities, skepticism of art as a career, and parent/child relationships were the big infernos among the "little fires everywhere", more than enough to hold interest in this book. Little Fires Everywhere spent 48 weeks on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list and the Amazon customer ratings gave it 4½ stars out of 5.

I enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere but was not as enamored as previous readers. I give it three stars which in my rating system equates to Better than average; not a waste of time. I am glad I read it and liked Celeste Ng's style sufficiently that I am on my library's waiting list to read her 2015 novel Everything I Never Told You.