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Everything I Never Told You

On sale

14th August 2014

Price: £9.99

CWA Daggers: John Creasey (New Blood), 2015

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9780349134291

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There is much here that might impress Pulitzer and Man Booker judges…Ng brilliantly depicts the destruction that parents can inflict on their children and on each other’ Mark Lawson, Guardian

‘This intriguing tale of unhappy families will have you gripped from the opening line . . . No wonder it beat Hilary Mantel and Stephen King to win Amazon’s book of the yearStylist

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.

And if you loved Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere, pre-order Celeste Ng’s brilliant new novel, Our Missing Hearts, now

What readers are saying:

‘Devastating…A truly tragic but devastatingly well written book’

‘Ng is a true craftsman. I implore you to read this. Also my favourite ending of a novel so far this year’

‘This is the best book I have read this year’

‘Really enjoyed this book, deeply moving, sad and thought provoking’

What's Inside

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Reviews

New York Times Book Review
If we know this story, we haven't seen it yet in American fiction, not until now... Ng has set two tasks in this novel's doubled heart-to be exciting, and to tell a story bigger than whatever is behind the crime. She does both by turning the nest of familial resentments into at least four smaller, prickly mysteries full of secrets the family members won't share... What emerges is a deep, heartfelt portrait of a family struggling with its place in history, and a young woman hoping to be the fulfillment of that struggle. This is, in the end, a novel about the burden of being the first of your kind-a burden you do not always survive
Marie Claire
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
Kirkus
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
Uwem Akpan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Say You’re One of Them
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
O, The Oprah Magazine
Cleverly crafted, emotionally perceptive . . . Ng sensitively dramatizes issues of gender and race that lie at the heart of the story . . . Ng's themes of assimilation are themselves deftly interlaced into a taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense
Mark Lawson, Guardian
An acute portrait of family psychopathology - this debut crime thriller is a surprise choice as Amazon's book of the year... There is much here that might impress Pulitzer and Man Booker judges...Ng brilliantly depicts the destruction that parents can inflict on their children and on each other
Stylist
This intriguing tale of unhappy families will have you gripped from the opening line . . . No wonder it beat Hilary Mantel and Stephen King to win Amazon's book of the year
Library Journal, starred review
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
Los Angeles Times
Excellent . . . an accomplished debut . . . heart-wrenching . . . Ng deftly pulls together the strands of this complex, multigenerational novel. Everything I Never Told You is an engaging work that casts a powerful light on the secrets that have kept an American family together-and that finally end up tearing it apart
Huffington Post
A powerhouse of a debut novel, a literary mystery crafted out of shimmering prose and precise, painful observation about racial barriers, the burden of familial expectations, and the basic human thirst for belonging... Ng's novel grips readers from page one with the hope of unraveling the mystery behind Lydia's death-and boy does it deliver, on every front
Vogue
[A] moving tale . . . of daughters for whom cultural disconnect is but the first challenge
Los Angeles Review of Books
Ng is masterful in her use of the omniscient narrator, achieving both a historical distance and visceral intimacy with each character's struggles and failures . . . On the surface, Ng's storylines are nothing new. There is a mysterious death, a family pulled apart by misunderstanding and grief, a struggle to fit into the norms of society, yet in the weaving of these threads she creates a work of ambitious complexity. In the end, this novel movingly portrays the burden of difference at a time when difference had no cultural value . . . Compelling
Boston Globe
Wonderfully moving . . . Emotionally precise . . . A beautifully crafted study of dysfunction and grief...[This book] will resonate with anyone who has ever had a family drama