Ohio tale balances snark, compassion
A literal fire opens Celeste Ng’s absorbing second novel. Adolescent Izzy Richardson, the rebellious youngest daughter in an otherwise seemingly welladjusted suburban family, pours patches of gasoline on the beds of her three older siblings and outside the locked door of her parents’ bedroom, and sets them ablaze.
The sharply observed novel then backtracks to reveal how things got to such a state of affairs in the well-run Richardson home, which is in the cozy suburb of Shaker Heights, outside Cleveland.
Shaker Heights, where Ng grew up, is portrayed as the ultimate planned community — a well-intentioned, liberal, wealthy hamlet established in 1912, where the many rules about, for example, the permissible colors and styles of houses are meant for the betterment ■ and comfort of all.
Mrs. Richardson — Ng uses the formal designation throughout the novel, distancing her slightly from the reader — is more than happy with life in the suburb. Born and raised there, she returned after college to raise her kids and work at the small-town newspaper.
The well-designed life she has made is upended when peripatetic art photographer Mia Warren — Mrs. Richardson’s polar opposite — moves, along with her daughter Pearl, into a rental owned by the Richardsons.
The lives of the two families soon become intertwined. The younger Richardson son, Moody, develops a crush on Pearl, but she is infatuated with the older son, Trip. Pearl is entranced with the stability and comfort of the Richardson household, while Izzy finds Mia a mother more suitable than her own. Mrs. Richardson, threatened, begins to investigate Mia’s past and finds more than she expected.
Meanwhile, a drama is unfolding elsewhere in Shaker Heights that polarizes the community. A 2-month-old Chinese baby, abandoned at a fire station, is in the process of being adopted by a white couple when her mother, who works at a restaurant in town, reveals herself and asks that the child be returned to her.
Ng does her level best to be fair to both parties: The prospective adoptive mother, Mrs. McCullough, has been through a devastating series of miscarriages, and birth mother Bebe Chow, a recent immigrant, had no way to properly care for her baby.
It’s clear, however, where Ng’s heart lies. Mrs. McCullough often borders on the cartoonish. Asked what she is doing to connect the baby she has named Mirabelle to her culture, she replies, “She already loves the rice. Actually, it was her first solid food.”
Plotwise, “Little Fires Everywhere” is as well-constructed as Shaker Heights, with the same faint feeling of claustrophobia. Each action is balanced by a relevant counter-action.
What keeps it alive is the flexibility of Ng’s narrative voice, which moves between lightly snarky social satire, distanced compassion for the characters and ambivalence about the strong bonds between mothers and daughters.