Just finished reading "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng. I had seen the title as I cruised Amazon Prime at night, looking for something to absorb me until sleep. The Amazon series features Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, two great actors. But I was more interested in "Bosch" and Netflix's "Politician" to embark on another streaming fest.
I came across the title on Kindle and said, "this sounds familiar." I read some of the reviews, read the author's bio. One reviewer called it "a suburban drama" and, for a second, I thought about leaving and finding an "urban drama," usually more my liking. But Kindle offers samples so I pulled it up and read it, all in one sitting. I was so bummed out when it ended that I bought the book and dove right in. The book had captured me. Resistance was futile.
Best thing about my Kindle is portability. Also, you can reset type size and screen brightness, all a boon when you read in bed and your partner is already snoozing away. Sill, it wasn't until the pandemic was in its third month that I uncovered the Kindle buried under manuscript pages and thought about giving it a try. My daughter Annie had give it to me two Christmases ago. I told her I was pleased. I charged it, roamed around on the settings screen, explored Goodreads, and then abandoned it. The coronavirus shutdown gave me plenty of time to clean my office and I found quite a few things on my Island of Abandoned Toys. Noise-cancelling headphones, a book about World War I nurses that I thought had been shipped to the library bookstore by Annie, needle-nose pliers, and assorted other things.
The Kindle was the big find. I bought a Michael Connelly novel. "Fair Warning" features Jack McEvoy, former daily newspaper beat reporter now working for a nonprofit company that investigates consumer complaints. I let the Kindle cool for a few weeks and then found Ng's novel.
Ng builds tension with the simplest tools. I was reading the first few chapters and thought well, we know the house burned down. But the fire caused me to ask the usual questions: the 5 Ws and H. I wanted some answers.
The author varies time and place. One of the terms bandied about by writers is "info dump." Usually it's a couple of paragraphs explaining a character's childhood or motivations. It can slow down a story. We prefer fast-paced stories. Think of 19th century novelists and how they spent a few pages describing a character's mannerisms or a manse's manicured gardens. Think of Charles Dickens and his sweeping sagas that have so many words in each chapter. Dickens serialized his work to boost book sales. Often, he promised the publisher to write 20 chapters of 32 pages each. That's a big book. His info dumps could be chapter-length but they always served some sort of purpose.
Ng does this in "Little Fires." We flash back to origins of major characters in order to understand the present that begins and ends with a burning house. The suburbs, it seems, is comprised of many types of people with many stories worth telling. Big surprise, right? As if "Weeds" and "American Beauty" and "Ordinary People" didn't delve into that deeply enough. It's a wonderful structure that Ng creates. I began to look forward to the flashback sections because I knew that mysteries lurked, that their structure is as exciting as the main narrative and amps up the tension. A great invented story, which is what we seek during this grim time.
