Little Fires Everywhere

This book by Celeste Ng has received so much press that I am not sure what I can add. Among other things, this is about a collision of cultures, as embodied by the two main female characters: affluent suburbanite Mrs. Elena Richardson, who has always followed the rules and believes good planning can prevent catastrophes, and unconventional artist Mia Warren, who makes up her own rules and has a child but has never had a sexual relationship. Reading the book felt like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The book starts with the culmination, i.e, the Richardsons' house in Shaker Heights burns to the ground. The rest of the book tells us how this came to happen. According to the New York Times, this is a literary device Ng employed in her first book as well. Kirkus enthuses, "This incandescent portrait of suburbia and family, creativity, and consumerism burns bright." While an advertisement for the first planned community of Shaker Heights offered "protection forever against depreciation and unwelcome change," when Mrs. Richardson rents a small duplex she inherited from her parents to artist Mia and her teenage daughter Pearl, change will overrun the rules. As Kirkus summarizes, "Mia and Pearl live a markedly different life from the Richardsons, ...making art instead of money ...; rooted in each other rather than a particular place ...; and assembling a hodgepodge home from creatively repurposed, scavenged castoffs and love rather than gathering around them the symbols of a successful life in the American suburbs..." Several reviewers have said the book's central theme is motherhood, for example, the Huffington Post asserts, "This story does a deep dive into what it means to be a mother, what qualifies as competency, who gets to decide, and raises so many more questions around the essential role of being a mother. " (see also: The Independent, The Guardian). I would disagree. Although I think the issues surrounding motherhood motivated many of the characters' actions, they are still not the core of the story. Rather it seems to be more about the relativism of right and wrong or the ambiguity of morality.
One of the aspects I found most striking about the story was the vivid visual imagery and examples of creativity Ng employed when describing Mia's work. One has to imagine Ng must be somewhat of a visual artist herself, or at least an avid afficionado, to provide such detail.
 Like the review in the Washington Post, the review from The Guardian was decidedly lukewarm. I am singling it out for a couple of reasons. It pretty much echoed my own reaction, which was, this is beautifully written, but the characters did not engage me. Also because, when the reviewer says, "After all, my experience of reading this book was perfectly pleasant. But the world in which I read it would be indistinguishable from the one in which I didn’t. This is a variety of novel that unnerves me, because it’s extremely well done and yet I didn’t warm to it. So what’s my problem?"--I was reminded of my reaction to Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See--I was the only person in my book group who did not absolutely love it. Additional reviews of Ng's book in The LA Times, The Times (UK), Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, the Seattle Times.
There is an interview with Ng and some questions to consider for the book group on Ng's website.