Little Fires Everywhere

This one was a bit of a slow start for me, but it picked up about halfway through and then I didn't want to put it down. So far in the two Ng books I've read, there's definitely a pattern of - here's what happened, and then it flashes back to show all the things that happened to get us to the point in the story where that thing that happened actually happened, only now you've got way more context. This started out with Izzy Richardson burning down her parents' home in Shaker Heights, an insular community with capital-R Rules about how everything should be done for optimal aesthetic.

I don't normally like to include story synopses in my reviews, and thank goodness for that because I'm having a hard time defining this story. It was great storytelling, and it was complicated in the best ways. Like: How do you define all the complicated relationships that you have with your family, your community, yourself? Why do you make the decisions you do, and what do you do when those decisions wind up hurting other people?

So much of the action was the kids - Pearl and Lexie and Moody and Trip and Izzy, and the things happening in their lives - but most of the character development was the mothers, Mia and Elena (though she was called Mrs. Richardson through most of the story). Both of these characters were fascinating, in wildly different ways. Ohhh I wanted to smack Mrs. Richardson for being smug and pushy and holier-than-thou all the time. Their whole community was like that - look at how organized and Rule-following we are, so nothing bad can happen in our lives, we don't recognize systemic problems, and when you can't meet our expectations, it's failure on YOUR part but you can always get your life together and try again, and Rule followers deserve more/better things in life than those who don't or can't play by those Rules, but the Rule Followers are also the default (white, upper-middle class, etc.).

Anyway. I don't know what I thought. I usually write in order to process things, but in writing this I'm just reminding myself how complicated it all was, and I still don't know. Maybe more later.