Everything I Never Told You

 

By Celeste Ng

Marilyn and James met in college. Marilyn was studying to become a doctor and James was a professor. They started dating and Marilyn became pregnant. They got married at city hall, against Marilyn's mother's objections. Doris Walker did not want her daughter marrying an Asian American man.

Being pregnant, Marilyn quit college and became a mom instead. Secretly, though, she still dreamed of going back to school and getting her medical degree. So when her two children reached grade school age, Marilyn moved away and enrolled in college again. But she wasn't gone long, because she soon discovered she was pregnant. So back to being a wife and mother and finally giving up on her dream.

When Lydia, James and Marilyn's second child, was sixteen she died of drowning. It was eventually ruled a suicide, as there was no indication of foul play. This was a terrible blow to James and Marilyn and to their two other children, Nath, the oldest and Hannah, the youngest. Nath and Lydia had been very close and Nath was the only one in the family who knew Lydia was unhappy. Because Marilyn, thwarted of her dream, had transferred it to Lydia. She talked herself into believing that Lydia's dream was to become a doctor. But Lydia was just going through the motions, studying hard only to please her mother, not actually caring about the career her mother was pushing on her.

And there's Nath. A studious teenage boy who has a dream too: he wants to be an astronaut. But his father wants his son to be the guy he wasn't when he was in school: a popular jock. But Nath is not a jock and he is not popular and his father thinks his dream of becoming an astronaut is stupid. 

Meanwhile, Hannah. The invisible child. As her parents' dreams for the two older kids occupies so much of their time, Hannah gets overlooked. Just a grade schooler, she lives on the edges of the family, idolizing her older brother and sister, loving her mother and father, and staying under the radar.

It's a complicated family relationship and Lydia's death and James' unfaithfulness has thrown everything into chaos.  

This was an OK read. I found Marilyn's and James' blindness to how their  expectations of their children are ruining their relationship with the kids very strange, given how smart they think they are. I also got rather bored with the story and really just wanted to finish it, get it over with. And there is a lot of stuff about how James and his two Asian-looking kids are treated like outsiders by the locals.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.