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Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Contemporary fiction

Little Fires Everywhere

BOTY FINALIST

Each year thousands of members vote for our Book of the Year award—congrats to Little Fires Everywhere!

by Celeste Ng

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Quick take

You know that picture-perfect suburb? Watch as dirty secrets and juicy neighborhood drama bring it down in flames.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Social_Issues

    Social issues

  • Illustrated icon, Now_a_Movie

    Now a movie

  • Illustrated icon, Suburban

    Suburban drama

  • Illustrated icon, Immigration

    Immigration

Synopsis

From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting story set in meticulously planned Shaker Heights that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Little Fires Everywhere.

Little Fires Everywhere

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. All spring the gossip had been about little Mirabelle McCullough—or, depending which side you were on, May Ling Chow—and now, at last, there was something new and sensational to discuss. A little after noon on that Saturday in May, the shoppers pushing their grocery carts in Heinen's heard the fire engines wail to life and careen away, toward the duck pond. By a quarter after twelve there were four of them parked in a haphazard red line along Parkland Drive, where all six bedrooms of the Richardson house were ablaze, and everyone within a half mile could see the smoke rising over the trees like a dense black thundercloud. Later people would say that the signs had been there all along: that Izzy was a little lunatic, that there had always been something off about the Richardson family, that as soon as they heard the sirens that morning they knew something terrible had happened. By then, of course, Izzy would be long gone, leaving no one to defend her, and people could—and did—say whatever they liked. At the moment the fire trucks arrived, though, and for quite a while afterward, no one knew what was happening. Neighbors clustered as close to the makeshift barrier—a police cruiser, parked crosswise a few hundred yards away—as they could and watched the firefighters unreel their hoses with the grim faces of men who recognized a hopeless cause. Across the street, the geese at the pond ducked their heads underwater for weeds, wholly unruffled by the commotion.

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Why I love it

You know the feeling: with a certain kind of novel, you suspend all disbelief from the get-go. This world, this setting, these characters, seem so real and inviting that you give yourself up to them completely—it’s a bit like falling in love.

Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere is one of those special books. Set in wealthy Shaker Heights, Ohio, in the 1990s, it’s the story of how two very different families both come together and break apart. The families live a mile apart in this wealthy planned community with rules governing everything down to the colors of the houses. Beyond that, their circumstances couldn’t be more different. The Richardsons—journalist Elena, attorney Bill, and their four teenage children—thrive in this cosseted suburban splendor, their sprawling, gracious home the embodiment of order and privilege. The "other family," the Warrens—Mia, a footloose artist and single mom to 15-year-old Pearl—have landed in the neighborhood’s most modest home with the hopes that Pearl can take advantage of its top-notch schools after years of contented wandering.

And Pearl ends up getting an education, all right, but not exactly the one her mom had in mind. They rent their bare-bones apartment from the Richardsons and before long the families find themselves intertwined. Mia’s creative energy intrigues the convention-bound Richardson kids even as Elena’s stability and creature-comforts attract Pearl. With teenage hormones added to the mix, the situation turns out to be combustible.

Ng excels at characterization: She’s juggling a lot of characters here, but each one feels fully realized and relatable. And she’s no slouch at suspense. The novel opens with the Richardson home up in flames and the Warrens leaving town—you spend the next 360 pages dying to know how events could possibly lead to that. Best of all is the story’s multidimensionality. Themes of class, individuality vs. community, the shadows cast by our pasts, and the true meaning of motherhood play out not just in the main story but in a subplot about the contested adoption of a Chinese baby by a Shaker Heights family. Each thread of the plot comes together without seeming forced.

I finished Little Fires Everywhere fully satisfied—yet also not quite ready to leave the world Ng so deftly created.

Member ratings (30,264)

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Contemporary fiction
View all
The Last Love Note
What Does It Feel Like?
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
The Wedding People
Honey
The Leftover Woman
The Same Bright Stars
Bye, Baby
Swan Song
The Days I Loved You Most
The Connellys of County Down
Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life
Jackpot Summer
Adelaide
The Collected Regrets of Clover
Again and Again
Evil Eye
Black Cake
Maame
Romantic Comedy
Someone Else’s Shoes
Once There Were Wolves
We Are the Brennans
The Bad Muslim Discount
What Comes After
Olga Dies Dreaming
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Monster in the Middle
Nine Perfect Strangers
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
Honey Girl
In Every Mirror She's Black
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Sankofa
The Unsinkable Greta James
The Love of My Life
The Five-Star Weekend
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
The Wishing Game
Behold the Dreamers
The Mothers
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Little Fires Everywhere
The Music Shop
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
The Reckless Oath We Made
When We Were Vikings
The Girl with the Louding Voice
A Good Neighborhood
Big Summer
All Adults Here
Happy & You Know It
Friends and Strangers
The Comeback
True Story
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Troubles in Paradise
White Ivy
This Close to Okay
The Chicken Sisters
The Prophets
In a Book Club Far Away
The Other Black Girl
Apples Never Fall
A Quiet Life
We Are the Light
The Most Likely Club
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
The Hotel Nantucket