A Crack That Was Covered by the Word "Family" in Celeste Ng's “Everything I Never Told You”

Celeste Ng's first novel Everything I Never Told You was introduced to me by a professor of mine who teaches about childhood trauma, so I expected someone in the novel to experience a traumatic event and recover from it. However, I was wrong. 

The novel opens with the shockingly straightforward line, "Lydia is dead.” With that, I immediately knew things were going to escalate very quickly. Readers are introduced to the Lee family, who loses their youngest daughter Lydia. Each member of the family had their own ways of grieving. Their reactions range from hatred to blame and even cheating, which slowly tears the entire family apart. 

Ng explains the background of each character as a means of contextualizing their present reactions to the loss of Lydia. Most notable here is the father of the family, James Lee. Lee has Chinese origins, and as the temporal setting of the novel is from the 1950s to the 1970s, not many Americans in this time period are familiar with seeing an Asian man living and studying among them. James Lee, although a successful professor at Harvard University, lives his entire life suffocated by the fear of being different from others. Then he meets Marilyn, a white woman, and marries her. The couple has three kids; Nath, Lydia, and Hannah.

At first, I did not think much about the title of the book. But as I read and thought more about each character and the Lee family as a whole, it became clear to me that the title Everything I Never Told You has a very depressing and realistic meaning for the Lees. The title indicates miscommunication between members of the family; they "talk at each other" rather than "talk to each other." Marilyn never expressed to James what she always wanted for her life, James took things for granted, Nath acted out of hatred toward his neighbor, Jack, without hearing any explanations, Hannah is too young to speak up, and Lydia, who is the most sensitive and miserable, never has the chance to explain herself to anyone, despite being the most loved member in the family. She instead exists as the loneliest in the house and, in my opinion, she was the word "family" that covered the cracks in the Lees’ armor, so when she was gone, the whole family fell apart. 

Everything I Never Told You shows readers a very normal family from the outside, but what ruins them is the feelings or thoughts that they never told each other. Each member of the family acts only for themselves and drowns in regrets when it is too late to fix “everything.” 

“The things that go unsaid are often the things that eat at you—whether because you didn’t get to have your say, or because the other person never got to hear you and really wanted to.”

Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

This book made me feel sad and compassionate for the Lees, because each of them misses so many chances to allow their loved ones to understand them. If anyone asks what we can learn from Everything I Never Told You, I will answer them: Talk, listen, express, both you and your loved ones. Others will never know what we truly want if we don’t tell them.