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LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE

by Celeste Ng ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 2017

With her second novel, Ng further proves she’s a sensitive, insightful writer with a striking ability to illuminate life in...

This incandescent portrait of suburbia and family, creativity, and consumerism burns bright.

It’s not for nothing that Ng ( Everything I Never Told You , 2014) begins her second novel, about the events leading to the burning of the home of an outwardly perfect-seeming family in Shaker Heights, Ohio, circa 1997, with two epigraphs about the planned community itself—attesting to its ability to provide its residents with “protection forever against…unwelcome change” and “a rather happy life” in Utopia. But unwelcome change is precisely what disrupts the Richardson family’s rather happy life, when Mia, a charismatic, somewhat mysterious artist, and her smart, shy 15-year-old daughter, Pearl, move to town and become tenants in a rental house Mrs. Richardson inherited from her parents. Mia and Pearl live a markedly different life from the Richardsons, an affluent couple and their four high school–age children—making art instead of money (apart from what little they need to get by); rooted in each other rather than a particular place (packing up what fits in their battered VW and moving on when “the bug” hits); and assembling a hodgepodge home from creatively repurposed, scavenged castoffs and love rather than gathering around them the symbols of a successful life in the American suburbs (a big house, a large family, gleaming appliances, chic clothes, many cars). What really sets Mia and Pearl apart and sets in motion the events leading to the “little fires everywhere” that will consume the Richardsons’ secure, stable world, however, is the way they hew to their own rules. In a place like Shaker Heights, a town built on plans and rules, and for a family like the Richardsons, who have structured their lives according to them, disdain for conformity acts as an accelerant, setting fire to the dormant sparks within them. The ultimate effect is cataclysmic. As in Everything I Never Told You , Ng conjures a sense of place and displacement and shows a remarkable ability to see—and reveal—a story from different perspectives. The characters she creates here are wonderfully appealing, and watching their paths connect—like little trails of flame leading inexorably toward one another to create a big inferno—is mesmerizing, casting into new light ideas about creativity and consumerism, parenthood and privilege.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-7352-2429-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: June 19, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring  passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the  Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

More by Kristin Hannah

by Kristin Hannah

THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s ( I Found You , 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Pub Date: April 24, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE

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by Lisa Jewell

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Reviews of Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

Little Fires Everywhere

by Celeste Ng

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• Literary Fiction
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About this Book

Book summary.

Winner of the 2017 BookBrowse Fiction Award From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You , a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town - and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides.  Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Excerpt Little Fires Everywhere

The orchestra teacher, Mrs. Peters, was widely disliked by everyone. She was a tall, painfully thin woman with hair dyed an unnatural flaxen and cropped in a manner reminiscent of Dorothy Hamill. According to Izzy, she was useless as a conductor and everyone knew to just watch Kerri Schulman, the first-chair violin, for the tempo. A persistent rumor—after some years, calcified as fact—insisted that Mrs. Peters had a drinking problem. Izzy hadn't entirely believed it, until Mrs. Peters had borrowed her violin one morning to demonstrate a bowing; when she'd handed it back, the chin rest damp with sweat, it had smelled unmistakably of whiskey. When she brought her big camping thermos of coffee, people said, you knew Mrs. Peters had been on a bender the night before. Moreover, she was often bitingly sarcastic, especially to the second violins, especially the ones who—as one of the cellos put it drily—were "pigmentally blessed." ...

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All the characters feel lifelike and balanced – everyone has their own strengths and flaws, and you sympathize even with the antagonists. Some of the story's plot does seem derivative. Even if this is not a novel for teens, the sections that feature Pearl and the Richardson children include many familiar tropes of young adult dramas – unrequited and requited love, teenage angst, the value and tensions of friendships, loners contrasted against the popular folk. Still, with its expertly done characterization, beautiful and often poignant writing, and subtle examination of suburban America, Little Fires Everywhere fills the reader with emotions and questions that linger long after the last page is finished... continued

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Girls in Trouble by Caroline Leavitt Set in 1987, this novel centers around an "open" adoption. After Sara's lover Danny learns she is pregnant, he splits...

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In the End, ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ Burned Down the Status Quo

The showrunner Liz Tigelaar discussed the series finale, why the writers diverged from the novel and how an act of violent destruction freed the characters from their cages.

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By Jennifer Vineyard

This interview includes spoilers for Wednesday’s season finale of “Little Fires Everywhere.”

The Hulu mini-series “Little Fires Everywhere” reached its blazing conclusion on Wednesday, with the Richardson children setting the family home aflame after their mother, Elena, evicted the Warrens and practically disowned her own daughter Izzy.

But arriving at that climax, which diverges significantly from the one in the best-selling Celeste Ng novel that inspired the series, took plenty of hard thought and emotional conversation in the writers’ room.

The book approaches race sideways, with most of its politics rooted in class struggle, predation and privilege. This changed when Kerry Washington was cast in the role of Mia Warren (joining Reese Witherspoon, already installed in the role of Elena). So before starting work on reconfiguring the story, the showrunner, Liz Tigelaar, assigned her writers to read another book, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.”

Among other things, DiAngelo’s book discusses interlocking forces of oppression — “the cages we’re in, and our inability to see the bars of the cage.” Tigelaar found that image to be visually resonant within the context of Ng’s story, including Mia’s photo-sculptural art pieces, especially the last of them, a white flour-covered representation of Shaker Heights, Ohio, that uses a literal bird cage to communicate how she sees Elena and the Richardson home.

On the last day in the room, the writers debated what should happen when Elena sees Mia’s piece. “What if we make it a comment on race and class?” Tigelaar asked her diverse group of writers. Attica Locke, one of the writers, noted that “The fact that you can separate race and class from motherhood is a privilege.” There was talk about having Witherspoon’s Elena dismantle the bird cage as an act of liberation, but another writer, Shannon Houston, objected: “I really don’t like a story that ends with a white woman destroying a black woman’s art.”

Tigelaar said “it was a truth that’s hard to hear, and it really changed how we viewed the ending.”

During a phone interview, she discussed why the writers diverged from the book at key moments (the ending, the abortion story line) and how an act of arson freed the characters from themselves. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

In the book, readers learn right away that Izzy set the “little fires everywhere” that burned down the Richardson house. But in the show, Izzy intends to start the fire but it’s her siblings who actually ignite it. Why did you make that change?

Celeste Ng’s book is so beautifully nuanced, and it was a real challenge to figure out how to bring to life the interior thoughts, the prose, the back stories. I felt like the ending was a place where we could go even deeper into the layers and the complexity. While we certainly didn’t want to rule out the possibility that it could be Izzy, we had an opportunity to create this mystery — that it could have been anybody. At first, I started kicking around the idea that it could be Elena, because that would be taking a character to the furthest point. But we wondered if that would be believable. So then I kicked around different ideas about the siblings: Could it be Lexie? Could it be Moody? Could it be Trip? And then I thought, “What if it didn’t have to be one person? What if it was all three?”

So instead of one person realizing her blind spots, now the rest of the family members realize theirs, too.

When I suggested this idea, it made me so emotional — I dug my fingernails into my fingertips. Arson is a big deal. Even if someone wants to start over, most people would find a different way, which is why in the book it makes so much more sense that a misguided teenager does it. So for all of them to do it, it becomes a pack mentality, to finish what Izzy started. A bunch of teenagers with the right feelings in their hearts get caught up in this over-the-top, crazy thing. And I loved that for so many different reasons. It was an opportunity to give them even bigger, more sweeping arcs. I loved what it said about the idea that we don’t have to become our parents. I loved that Izzy, in her misguided way, was trying to tell them something all season, and in this moment, they’re finally able to hear it and to see themselves through her eyes. I loved that the rest of the siblings were really sending up this kind of smoke signal to Izzy, that if she came back to their scorched earth, things would be different.

At the same time, Elena takes ownership of it. When the cops ask, “Who started the fire?” she says, “I did.” No, she didn’t get the gasoline, and no, she didn’t light the matches. But is she deeply responsible on some level? She pushed over the first domino that led to everything collapsing. To me, that’s the more realistic version of Elena starting the fire. We talked a lot about wanting hope in the ending. In the pilot, we set up the house on a grassy hill that looks like the epitome of the American dream — family, stability, success — and then we explore the house and all its trappings as a cage. We think of Elena as the house. What we start to see is that she’s in this cage, too. If her children do away with this cage, it actually means that she’s free.

So Mia is in a constant process of burning down her cages, because she’s starting over every time she moves.

Exactly. And we get to layer all of these pieces in with how Mia burns her art. It’s not the thing that’s of value, it’s the picture of the thing. That’s the art. So everything she leaves behind doesn’t matter. Elena lives in a house with heavy things — everything is so rooted. It takes her seeing Mia’s life to wonder, “What if you weren’t rooted?” I mean, what do all these things matter if you don’t have the people you love most? What’s the good of creating a home if your children are not happy inside of it?

One of the issues in the finale is Lexie’s abortion. Elena tries to weaponize the right to choose in her fight against Bebe, but she’s so judgmental when she thinks it was Pearl who had the abortion. Yet Elena wanted an abortion when she became pregnant with Izzy.

Everybody wants people to make the same choices they made, because it validates them. When someone does something you’re unable to do, sometimes you double down on the judgment because seeing that other way becomes unbearable. So Elena’s dismissal of Pearl comes from that, from wanting to paint Mia as the “bad mom.”

One thing we wanted to explore with this story is the idea of how we view abortion — even if we believe in choice, we sometimes still judge the circumstances in which you make the choice. Elena’s mom has that mentality: “We believe people should have choice, but we wouldn’t get an abortion.” If you have money and resources, why would you not want to have another baby? So it’s this idea that not wanting another baby can be a reason. Is it OK if I’m content with the family that I have? Is it OK if I don’t want more?

Lexie knew her choice the minute she knew she was pregnant, and she didn’t pull back from that choice. And it was important when she admits to Elena that she’s the screw-up in the family — when she goes through the laundry list of her sins — that it didn’t sound like having an abortion was one of the things she did wrong. What Lexie did wrong was writing Pearl’s name down at the clinic. What she did wrong was appropriate Pearl’s hardship story as her own.

This story takes place in the 1990s, when it would have been much easier for Lexie to get an abortion in Ohio than it is now. Did the state’s various restrictions to access affect your decision whether or not to shoot there?

We always knew we were shooting the show in L.A., but we did debate whether we should try to shoot exteriors in Ohio. It made more sense for the budget, production schedules, and everything, to shoot everything in L.A. But I was glad that we weren’t shooting that story line in a state that wouldn’t allow that story line to occur. It’s very sobering to look at that now and see how much we’ve regressed.

In the show itself, as well as the online discussion, motherhood is on trial. Elena insists she’s a good mother and that Mia and Bebe are bad mothers, but she doesn’t see the whole picture. For example, both Elena and Bebe experience postpartum depression and run away from their responsibilities, but one of them has a safety net.

We loved showing those parallels. When we were prepping to film the courtroom scene where Mia takes the stand, Kerry really wanted to add a line where she said, “They can both be good mothers.” We don’t have to paint one as a bad mother. It’s like Attica Locke’s line: “You didn’t make good choices. You had good choices.” They’re thematic lines that really resonated with us. Elena’s lowest point is different than Bebe’s lowest point because Elena can walk away knowing that her husband is there, her best friend will come to help, her children will be safe, and nothing will happen to her. There will be no consequences. For Bebe, the stakes are having a child or not having a child. There is so much inequity in that.

Fatherhood isn’t debated to this extent, even when it’s a plot point.

If a little girl shows up to school with her hair in braids and it looks a mess, if her mom did it, it would be like, “What’s wrong with that mother?” But if her dad did it, it would be like: “That’s cute. He tried.” You want to be like: “Hey, we’re all trying. We’re all just trying to do our best.” That’s what I love about these characters. They fiercely love their children. They want what’s best for their children. They’re just blind sometimes, as we all are, to the inadvertent damage they might be causing.

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Little Fires Everywhere: The New York Times Top Ten Bestseller Hardcover – 9 Nov. 2017

'I am loving Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Maybe my favorite novel I've read this year' John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars

' To say I love this book is an understatement . It's a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears ' Reese Witherspoon

The brilliant new novel by the author of the New York Times bestseller, Everything I Never Told You.

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When the Richardsons' friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family - and Mia's.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of long-held secrets and the ferocious pull of motherhood-and the danger of believing that planning and following the rules can avert disaster, or heartbreak.

• Print length 352 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Little, Brown
• Publication date 9 Nov. 2017
• Dimensions 16.1 x 3.1 x 23.9 cm
• ISBN-10 1408709716
• ISBN-13 978-1408709719
• See all details

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From the Publisher

An extract from Chapter 1

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. All spring the gossip had been about little Mirabelle McCullough—or, depending which side you were on, May Ling Chow—and now, at last, there was something new and sensational to discuss. A little after noon on that Saturday in May, the shoppers pushing their grocery carts in Heinen’s heard the fire engines wail to life and careen away, toward the duck pond. By a quarter after twelve there were four of them parked in a haphazard red line along Parkland Drive, where all six bedrooms of the Richardson house were ablaze, and everyone within a half mile could see the smoke rising over the trees like a dense black thundercloud.

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Little, Brown (9 Nov. 2017)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1408709716
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1408709719
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.1 x 3.1 x 23.9 cm
• 415 in Adoption (Books)
• 1,073 in Political Fiction (Books)
• 2,740 in Women's Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times bestselling author of the novels Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages.

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

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Top reviews from other countries

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