Imprint
- BlackFriars
Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet.
After sixteen-year-old Lydia goes missing and her body turns up in the lake, the police rule it as a suicide. But Lydia's family are determined to search for clues to find out what really happened...Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.
When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.
Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.
More books by Celeste Ng
Praise for Everything I Never Told You
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The mysterious circumstances of 16-year-old Lydia Lee's tragic death have her loved ones wondering how, exactly, she spent her free time. This ghostly debut novel calls to mind The Lovely Bones - Marie Claire
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[A] moving tale... of daughters for whom cultural disconnect is but the first challenge - Vogue
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This emotionally involving debut novel explores themes of belonging using the story of the death of a teenage girl, Lydia, from a mixed-race family in 1970s Ohio...Lydia is remarkably imagined, her unhappy teenage life crafted without an ounce of cliche. Ng's prose is precise and sensitive, her characters richly drawn - Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Ng constructs a mesmerizing narrative that shrinks enormous issues of race, prejudice, identity, and gender into the miniaturist dynamics of a single family. A breathtaking triumph, reminiscent of prophetic debuts by Ha Jin, Chang-rae Lee, and Chimamanda Adichie, whose first titles matured into spectacular, continuing literary legacies - Library Journal, starred review
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Ng expertly explores and exposes the Lee family's secrets... These long-hidden, quietly explosive truths, weighted by issues of race and gender, slowly bubble to the surface of Ng's sensitive, absorbing novel and reverberate long after its final page. Ng's emotionally complex debut novel sucks you in like a strong current and holds you fast until its final secrets surface. - Kirkus
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I couldn't stop reading Everything I Never Told You... the writing is so smooth and keenly observed. The portrait of each member of the Lee family, the exploration of their mixed-race issues and the search for the killer of their sister and daughter, Lydia, pulled at my heartstrings to the very end. - Uwem Akpan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Say You re One of Them
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