Little Fires Everywhere

It is a very emotional experience to part with a beloved friend, with someone you’ve borne your soul to, with a person who has seen every facet of who you are. It’s perilous to think about starting over, about beginning anew, one step at a time, not even sure if new people will understand you as they had. But that’s the beauty in humanity; we are a resilient people. Even the people who seem most concrete and stable are capable of change, redirection, regrowth. We are a circumstantial people. We may like to fool ourselves into believing that there are universal truths in this world, that we can control our fate and maintain ourselves in the routines of practice and diligence. But the world works in mysterious ways. The nomads may find monotony and the traditionalists may find themselves uprooted. In a single instant, every life in a hundred mile radius can be turned upside down.

Celeste Ng has encapsulated human experience so vividly and truthfully that it hurts. As I read, I am forced to face my own mistakes, my own mistaken assumptions, my own trivial understandings of the world around me. There is a wisdom in every character she has created. Through the story of the lives of two families in a very small, well-ordered town, Ng has shed light upon nearly every question we are to afraid to face. Issues of race, class, motherhood, love, right and wrong.

There are no true heroes in this book. Each and every character evolves. Each character has been through their own trial, leading them to the decisions they make, whether they were choices they ultimately regretted or not. The choices we make, the judgements we make, all of them are ultimately woven into the fabric of our collective life. Our thoughts, feelings, decisions, can very severely impact other people’s lives. Permanently. We do not always have the opportunity for neatly wrapped goodbyes. We do not always have the “tomorrow” we planned for, the “tomorrow” when we would explain the unanswered questions, apologize for misunderstandings, for the venom we spit out in the heat of the moment. We may never know what exactly we said to cause another person to act out, in a way that’s so permanent it cannot be taken back. Ever.

We are left feeling hollow. Remorseful. If only we knew what was written at the end of the last chapter, maybe we would have done things differently. If we weren’t so stubborn that we alone were the wisest, that others ways aren’t always the “wrong” ways, then maybe the ending would turn out differently.

I am simultaneously saddened and humbled and enlightened by this book. There are people who will come into our lives as blessings, and we might not even realize it until they are gone. They may be in our lives for only a short while, but their impact is lasting and unrelenting. Little Fires Everywhere reminds us of our first loves, our youthful ignorance, our childish ambitions, our carefully crafted dreams, our meticulously crafted intuitions about right and wrong, heartbreak, remorse, grief. Love. Most of all, love.

It will be a long time before I am able to forget these characters who have moved me so. Pearl, fiercely independent and proud of her mother, never asking for too much, but wanting all the same. When she finally gets to grow, to exist as children should, the carpet is swept from under her feet and her life is uprooted again, no warnings, no goodbyes.

Izze, her tenacity and spirit, her vivacious desire to be true to herself rather than a cookie-cutter youth. Lexie, her forced maturation upon realizing that “perfect” is an often unattainable dream, that often life has a different narrative spelled out than the one we expected. Trip, who discovers that vulnerability isn’t always rewarded with a happily ever after. Moody, who understands only too late, that our feelings not being reciprocated doesn’t mean that there are no feelings at all. Feelings are feelings, they aren’t always manifested in the same way. It doesn’t mean we would be better off without the people we love.

Mia. A mother if there ever was one. Desperately trying to provide for her daughter and nourish her own dreams. Open and loving and resilient. Elena. A woman who never allowed herself to dream, caught up in her own carefully devised plans for perfection, order and civility. Always trying to do the right thing, and somehow ending up at a loss for it. Unable to be emotional, vulnerable, real; unintentionally keeping a brick barricade between her and her children, much like the edifice of the house she so desperately loved. A house which burned with no goodbye, no thank you, no inkling of camaraderie, of history or anything. It burned, just like that. And with it, everything Mrs. Richardson had always been so sure was right.

Thank you, Celeste. Thank you for this treasure, I will cherish it greatly for the rest of my life.