Hello and welcome to read remark! Today
we're going to talk about Little Fires
Everywhere by Celeste Ng.
Little Fires
Everywhere by Celeste Ng: this book has
been making a splash I'm a literary
scene lately.
It is a modern-day literary fiction
retelling of Firestarter by Stephen King,
in which a little girl sets little fires
everywhere and can only come to squelch
the fire by self actualization and the
power of loooove.
Nope.
Just kidding!
I think sometimes I'm a lot funnier to myself
than I actually am in real life.
Seriously speaking, Little Fires
Everywhere is literary fiction. It is by
Celestine Ng. It has a mother-daughter duo.
Mia is the mother. Pearl is the daughter.
Mia is an artist...an artiste...who has
lived on the road with her daughter for
pretty much her daughter Pearl's whole
life. Every few months they pick up roots
and move and it's all framed around
Mia's art. So, she will get a grand idea
in her head for the next art project,
work on it for a few months,
live in a place for a few months, and
then once the project is done, they move
on to the next place. But when you see
these family units who are on the run
there's oftentimes more to it than just
artfulness. Usually there is a dark
hidden past that they're running from.
I wouldn't say that it's a
dark hidden past, but there is a hidden
past from which they are running.
What is the hidden past?
I'm not going to tell you!
Read the book. You'll find out for yourself.
Mia and Pearl move to Shaker Heights.
It's not really a small town, but it is
one of those insular towns where some of
the town gossip seem to know what
everybody is getting up to.
When they settle down in Shaker Heights,
that's when the gossip mill starts,
particularly in the form of their
landlady. Their landlady also has four
teenagers of her own, who are around the age of Pearl.
Of course, those teenagers and Pearl become
friends. And so there's a lot of
intermingling between the two families,
especially when Mia starts working part
time for her landlady as well.
So there's your basic setup. You have this landlady
and her husband and family, and they're
all well-to-do, well-established in the
community. And then you have arty Mia and Pearl.
Dirt-poor, moving, very itinerant,
one place to another all the time. And
there's this commingling of the families.
At first, the landlady...oh I just finished
the book today. I'm wanting to say her
name is Rrs. Rutherford (it's RICHARDSON), so I'm gonna
call her that and probably be wrong and
cringe every time I look at the video (yup!)
but the landlady, Mrs. Rutherford (*Richardson)
at first feels kind of this benevolent
benefactorship over Mia and Pearl.
She feels like she is doing them a real
favor by renting them their house at a
reasonable rate, at giving Mia part-time
work so she can focus more on her art, at
giving pearl a second home with her own
children so that she can have another
safe space to go to.
But the more Mia and
Pearl kind of move in on the lives
together, the more Mrs. Rutherford (Richardson) starts
to feel more proprietorship.
Territorial.
Maybe threatened by by their presence.
And it's odd to even say "threatened"
because I think more than anything the
landlady looks down her nose at Mia and
Pearl. She doesn't necessarily feel
overtly threatened, but maybe
subconsciously threatened by the freedom
that Mia has and by the wonderful
relationship that she and Pearl have
together.
This book is amazing.
Amazing!
I don't want to get too far into the
narrative because it's going to give
away some key plot points and I really
think those are best left for the reader
to come across on their own, but there
are a lot of different themes that  covers.
1: privilege.
Privilege in
many of its forms. There's white
privilege because there is a Chinese
baby who,
a white couple is trying to adopt her. Meanwhile, her birth mother is trying to
get her back. And so there's the whole
debate of: does this rich well-meaning
loving white couple have more of a right
to this baby than her very own birth
mother does? And will that baby in turn
lose her Chinese culture?
Another theme is
economic privilege, and this one is where
it draws a lot more of a sharp dividing
line between right and wrong.
So, the landlady, of course, has the
economic privilege. At first, she uses it
as a benevolent fairy wand upon all the
little people around her and her
universe. As the story goes on, she begins
to use a more and more as a battering
ram and it's really interesting to see
that shift in this woman who was not a
bad woman to begin with...
Hmm. Things shift.
It also deals with the theme of mothers
and their relationships with their
children. You see a lot of different
family dynamics at work in this book.
You see a mother who has almost a hateful,
resentful relationship with her problem child.
You see a mother who has a loving,
almost...I wouldn't say Gilmore Girls-ish
because they're not peers. They're
clearly mother and daughter. But more of
a convivial relationship with her
daughter. You see people are yearning to
be mothers. People who are yearning to be
better mothers. You see a lot of
different family dynamics at play good
and bad. Of course, there's also the
coming-of-age element in this book. With
all of the children involved being
teenagers, you see a lot of growing up. So
there's a shedding of innocence,
shedding of inhibitions; they grow up.
They become little adults. And it's just
such an odd time, when teenagers turn
from children to semi adults, playing at
the adult games, but not really having
the adult emotions or strength to go
with all of those adult games that
they're playing at. And so, it's a really
interesting shift, because there are a
lot of teenagers in this book you're at
that pivotal moment in their lives
where some of the blinders are coming
down. They're seeing their parents for
who they really are. They're seeing
themselves for who they really are.
They're examining the relationships they
have with other people. It's...it's really
interesting to see all of those
different ways that teens are coming of
age in the book.
And then there's also
the fire symbolism throughout the book.
I'm not spoiling anything to say that
one of the teenagers at the very
beginning of the book sets a fire to the
house. Literally, her family's house. And
and it's very clear the message she was
trying to send with it. But throughout
the book, you see all these other little
symbolic fires being set that people are kind
of burning up connections that they have
had in the past, burning up the
connections that they have with each
other in the present, things sparking to
life things dying down in the embers.
It's really interesting to see the
little fires everywhere in the book, not
just in the literal fire that's in the
house but just the the burning and
yearning and the spark that comes to
life and so many of these people.
I definitely give this one five stars.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.
You should definitely give it a read. It's
well worth the buzz.
I highly recommend it.
All right, let me know if you have any
book recommendations of your own.
I'm always happy to get them and, thank you!
THANK YOU so much for all of the book
recommendations you guys have given me
up to now, as well.
It's been really fun
to dig in and see some new authors that
I haven't checked out before, so thank
you very much! I look forward to more.
I'll catch you next time. Bye. :)
