Book Review: Little Fires Everywhere, the Suburban Utopia...Or is it?

In Shaker Heights, the tranquil, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned -- from the layout of the roads, to the height of the houses, to the successful lives everyone will go on to lead. And in Shaker Heights, no one embodies these ideals more the Elena Richardson, a mother of four and journalist at the local paper. The story is begins when mother-daughter pair, Mia and Pearl Warren, arrive in Shaker Heights and subsequently rent a house from the Richardsons. Mia--a eclectic and unique artist-- is an anomaly among the picture perfect lawyers and doctors in their cookie cutter houses. However, despite this, soon, both Pearl and Mia find places among the community, as the Richardson children find themselves drawn to them. This is disrupted by an issue that divides the community;A issue that divides the Richardson household and the Warrens, putting Elena and Mia face-to-face. Elena, in search of Mia’s motives, digs deep into her past, which eventually comes an unexpectedly high cost to herself and her family.

The plot of the novel follows a familiar format; a tragedy has occurred, how did it happen, who did it, and why? In “Little Fires Everywhere”, the story is ignited with a literal fire in the Richardson’s home, leaving us the mystery of who set it and why. Then, Celeste takes advantage of the literary device of flashback, creating the rest of the book from 11 months prior to the fire until the fire. This format is particularly beneficial to this story because it allows you to see the eventual aftermath of actions that occur in the past, yet also occur further along in the book.

In the novel, “Little Fires Everywhere”, Celeste Ng creates three-dimensional and realistic characters that develop throughout the entire novel. Many of these characters develop through the introduction of Pearl and Mia into their lives and the events that follow their introduction. The Richardson children, being a large part of the story, become more understanding and mature as the story progresses, some finding their calling among others and some, seemingly, being left behind in the dust. A prime example of this would be Izzy, the black sheep among the family and from the beginning of the novel, a suspect for the arson of the family home. Izzy’s development throughout the novel highlights her growing connection to Mia and the growing distance between herself and her own family.

Within the book, Ng adopts the voice of an omniscient figure - pushing ethical and moral decisions onto the reader from an objective perspective. Her tone creates a slightly off feeling through the novel, as she watches these “little fires” be set in this suburbian utopia without doing anything. In her perch as the narrator, Ng also wastes no time using her characters, minor or major, to express thinly veiled remarks about race, class, family, and the dangers of the status quo. And, as the book becomes more politically and emotionally charged, as a reader you almost begin to pick a side based on the information given to you, observing the moral and ethical nuances that pop up through the entire novel. This is amplified by the heartbreaking and remarkably real interaction of these two families - the Richardsons and the Warrens - and the devastating consequences that arise from it.

Overall, this book is extremely enjoyable to read - well written and extremely well thought out - however, is also slightly tragic to watch. With incredible prose, Celeste chips away at the foundation with her remarks on the “little fires” of the perfect suburbia, and eventually, it all comes falling down.