Little Fires Everywhere – A Superb Novel on the Depths of Motherhood and Suburban Shallowness

“Sometimes, just when you think everything’s gone, you find a way. Like after a prairie fire. The earth is all scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that too, you know. They start over. They find a way.”

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere (published September 2017) literally begins with fire blazing. An elegant house in an opulent suburb is set in flames. The Richardson family, owners and residents of the house, witness the scene with a dazed and detached expression, just as the firemen reports ‘Not an accident’. Who set the fire and Why? There’s not much mystery on ‘who’, because the Richardson couples and their three teenage children are certain that 14-year-old Isabel Richardson aka Izzy, the youngest member of the family, is behind this arson. And, as if to confirm their suspicion, Izzy is conspicuously missing. To know the ‘why’, the story is re-winded back to the months, when a Bohemian mother and her teenage daughter shifted to the affluent, planned community of Shaker Heights, in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Ng’s debut novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) revolves around disappearance and death of teenager Lydia, middle daughter of a Chinese-American family. Ng uses the mystery surrounding Lydia’s suicide or murder to profoundly explore parenthood, suburban life, and racial stereotyping. With her second novel, Ng more gracefully intertwines the tale of two polarizing families to unearth the lurking problems within a seemingly progressive and liberal-minded community. The main focus of Little Fires Everywhere is the mother-children relationship. The fathers are figuratively or literally absent. The mothers in the novel dotes on their girls, determined to give them the best life possible, and in turn build a kind of golden cage, demanding strict adherence to rules and yet they scramble to protect their children from different kinds of maelstrom. On a subtly sociopolitical level, the novel jabs at the grand progressive ideals of mostly-white suburban communities, whom despite their parade of ideals remain blind or unsympathetic to race and class issues.

Little Fires Everywhere is set in the 1990s, dubbed as ‘Post-Racial Era’ in US. Elena Richardson aka Mrs. Richardson is a WASP and her domain is Shaker Heights. She has married her college sweet-heart and settled back in the community, where she grew up. Elena is all about legacy, stability, and rules (‘college, marriage, mortgage, and children’ she says). A husband with a steady job, four beautiful children, big house with flawlessly trimmed lawn, and cars, and what more she could desire for? Elena also believes in doing the ‘right thing’. She proudly claims how Shaker Heights, at the height of Civil Rights Movement, allowed people of other color to inhabit the suburbs. Elena works as a reporter for a local paper, which mostly reports annoyingly positive stories about the neighborhood. Apart from engaging in charity works, Elena also rents out her small apartment house for below market rate; to deserving people who would benefit from her help. She has rented out the lower portion of her apartment to Yang, a genial immigrant from Hong Kong who works as a bus driver. Now the upper portion is rented to Mia Warren, a freewheeling artist, accompanied by her beautiful, spirited 14 year old daughter Pearl Warren.  

Celeste Ng (author photo by Kevin Day Photography)

Mrs. Richardson who subtly controls everybody finds it hard to breakthrough reticent nature of Mia. Mia doesn’t believe in rules or in the strict notions of right and wrong. She has had only one principle so far: To not get attached. The mother-daughter team has for years moved through different American states, always renting out shabby apartments, and only owning things which they could fit into their VW Rabbit. She does part-time work in restaurants and preoccupied with photographic art at other times. Now and then, Mia sells her art through a contact in New York art gallery. The allegedly ‘shabby’ lifestyle and remoteness makes Mrs. Richardson to scrutinize Mia as if she’s an alien being. Elena expects Mia to showcase her ‘gratefulness’ or treat her as ‘noblesse’ (for providing a chance to live in orderly neighborhood). Furthermore, Elena offers Mia to be her house-keeper, thinking she could mold this woman, unlike her own youngest daughter Lexie. By this time, Pearl has very well acquainted with the Richardson family. She spends her evenings in the Richardsons’ couch, sandwiched between Moody, who crushes on Pearl, and Trip, the suave brother of Moody, for whom Pearl holds an infatuation. Pearl also looks up to Lexie, a saucy 17 year old and the eldest of Richardson children. Rebellious Izzy, the youngest of Richardsons', often shuts herself in her room, cooking up ways to upend the irritating orderliness of her life. In order to keep an eye on Pearl, Mia accepts the house-keeping job. But as one could expect, trouble brews. And, the seemingly strong ties between the two families turn murkier.

The subtle power in Celeste Ng’s writing lies in how she conjures certain images to our mind and uses it as a spring-board to broaden the story. For example, the house set ablaze or the painting of a mother looking at her baby in a transfixed manner. The later example plays a key role in finding out the hidden depths of the central character (Mia). Moreover, the painting itself (titled ‘Virgin and Child #1’) – the mother’s utterly absorbed gaze – serves as the symbol for mother-daughter relationship, vividly described in the novel. The child custody battle scenario is brilliantly used to expose the racial and cultural myopia of the white liberals. It holds a mirror up to gaze at the utter superficiality of the liberalism and impenetrable bubble of white liberal privilege. The writer asserts that in communities with nuanced hierarchies and codes, the racism and cultural bias is also expressed through subtle means (privilege and progressive ideals doesn’t mean that one is immune to such things). 

There’s no single, authoritative voice in Little Fires Everywhere. The story which unfurls from the perspective of group of characters provides a holistic view of the happenings.Everyone has their say, and it shows how everyone is limited by their perspective and lack of experience or awareness. The novel is character-driven and its beauty lies in how the author makes us see all the characters’ world from inside out. It’s not a full-fledged mystery or thriller, yet it moves at breakneck pace (I read two-thirds of the novel in a single setting). The most impressive aspect of ‘Little Fires’ is how we forgive or even empathize with certain characters, who might be otherwise pigeonholed as the ‘wicked ones’. Mrs. Richardson comes off as the embodiment of the peculiar Suburb’s virtues and flaws. She desires to suppress passion, uphold rules, deny dark truths, and so on. And, even though Mrs. Richardson’s thoughts and actions incite our fury, we tend to understand her, and even shed a tear or two for her circumscribed thinking. Celeste Ng truly pushes us inside the skin of these people to comprehend their nature. Apart from Mrs. Richardson’s characterization, I also loved how earnestly the author depicts the emotional agonies of the childless McCulloughs. But of course, the large appeal of the novel lies in the way we tend to identify or root for Mia Warren and Izzy Richardson. Since, we the avid readers, often celebrate non-conformity, rule-breaking, and rebellious spirits. I think the splendor of any literary work or art lies in how it kindles the little fires within us, while the ‘normal’, hushed-up life inclines to do the opposite. In that vein, Little Fires Everywhere (352 pages) is a multi-layered and expertly crafted novel, which gracefully extracts our whole emotional energies. There might be little too much spelling out or some heavy, unnecessary foreshadowing, but these are just nitpicks compared to the entrancing reading experience I had.