Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I decided to pick up a few titles that I normally wouldn't read -- thanks to GR posts -- in order to spread my wings a little bit.

This is traditional modern lit stuff. I admit I am generally more drawn to the genres instead of this character-primary stuff that tends to circle and circle around the pain.

So here we have it. A quintessential family drama in the late '70s, giving us the innards of every family member, sometimes flavored with some of the normal, sometimes pleasant, and a huge heaping serving of the everyday misunderstandings of life. Oh, and the pain. The pain.

I sometimes thought of this as a potential thriller. Sometimes as a potential comedy. Sometimes as a thoroughly contemporary drama that illustrates how us old folks used to think in a time that has now passed us by. Either way, it's like reading slices of life of the 50s through the lens of the 80s, but offset again.

Did I particularly enjoy this? Maybe. In a way. I did get into the characters and felt something for them. I felt a lot of sadness. And a lot of annoyance. But since this was kinda the point, I can't really complain all that much. It's not like I could go back in time and tell these people to wake up and see the others for who they really were, not as we'd like them to be.

But alas.

That's also rather the point, too.

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