“…she had been afraid so long, she had forgotten what it was like not to be…”
This line from Celeste Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You, (2014) strikes at the heart of most readers, I think. Most humans. How many of us live with some form of fear? From trepidation to terror, we walk through the world every action and decision in some way a response to a cautious or crippling fear. I imagine that if we were to be read by some ultraviolet or magnetic resonance machine programmed for that use, most of us would be comprised of large swaths of mottled shades of a deep red, scars and resultant characteristics exposed, burnt darkly into our aura, mapping all we are and do. Ng’s subtly mysterious and psychologically compelling narrative of this human, flawed Lee family pulls like quicksand, slowly closing out any world we might have known before so that by the time we are done, our world view is rearranged – and maybe a tiny bit healed – by seeing everything we’ve never been told or realized in ourselves and others.
A master storyteller, Ng uses imagination and linguistic capacity to simultaneously hover over and embody characters, sweeping us both deeper into and further outside of ourselves, letting us forgive enough to fall in love with the plight of being human once again. We realize there simply is no other choice but to breathe it all in. And then out, letting it go in peace.
Recommended for teen to adult readers who seek understanding, and who aren’t afraid to accept it.
Michelle G. Bulla is a 20+ year high school English teacher at Monroe-Woodbury High School in Orange County, where she also serves as 9-12 English Department Chair. She is on the Executive Board for the New York State English Council (NYSEC), serves on the NYSED English Language Arts Content Advisory Panel, and worked on the new revision of the state standards.