2018 Feb 3
Shaker Heights, the meticulously planned and well-to-do suburb of Cleveland, welcomes Mia Warren, an enigmatic artist and single mother and her teenage daughter, Pearl. Having rented out a house from the Richardson’s, the families lives will become intertwined in ways they never could have imagined…But Mia’s mysterious past and disregard for the rules threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When the Richardson’s friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family – and Mia’s.
Celeste Ng certainly has a flair for creating an intricate web of relationships, emotions and minute details between her characters to form an intriguing family drama. Her bestselling work, “Everything I Never Told You”, topping Amazon’s Best Books of the Year list for 2014 and achieving many other awards, set high expectations for her next work. Needless to say, she lives up to our expectations.
Ng gives us a rich albeit slow moving read with intense combinations of family dynamics and small town politics, race and privilege while raising some tough moral questions on what made someone a mother (biology or love?), that will leave readers very much invested in her novel but stuck wondering between what is right and wrong when there seems to be no such clear cut answer.
Rating – 4/5
