"A novel about the burden of being the first of your kind—a burden you do not always survive.” |
Celeste Ng’s debut novel, “Everything I Never Told You,” is a literary thriller that begins with some stock elements: a missing girl, a lake, a local bad boy who was one of the last to see her and won’t say what he knows. The year is 1977, the setting, a quiet all-American town in Ohio, where everyone knows one another and nothing like this has ever happened before.
The mystery for the reader is not whether Lydia is still alive, or where she’s gone — Was she doing well at school? Who were her friends? Did she seem depressed? Did she ever talk about hurting herself? — and her parents, sister and brother all find themselves unable to answer honestly. The mystery is why they can’t bring themselves to tell one another, or the police, what they believe is behind her disappearance. |