Scan barcode
olibbis_reads's review against another edition
5.0
Caraca que livro bom!
Eu não consegui parar de ler.
A escrita da Celeste (e a tradução) me capturou desde a primeira página, tanto que li ele em um dia. Comprei ele faz um tempo e ele ficou aqui esperando pouco mais de um ano que eu tivesse coragem de ler. Li no momento certo, eu precisava muito de um livro que me prendesse assim agora.
Eu não consegui parar de ler.
A escrita da Celeste (e a tradução) me capturou desde a primeira página, tanto que li ele em um dia. Comprei ele faz um tempo e ele ficou aqui esperando pouco mais de um ano que eu tivesse coragem de ler. Li no momento certo, eu precisava muito de um livro que me prendesse assim agora.
milliecrystal's review against another edition
3.0
Mmmm…quite unsure how to feel about this one. In terms of what I liked about this book, I felt Celeste Ng had a very honest and realistic way of portraying what life would have been like for a mixed race family in 1970s America. I also think she captured the angst of each of the characters well which obviously plays a huge part in this book.
Unfortunately there were quite a few aspects of this novel I personally just couldn’t get on board with. I don't believe the purpose of this book was to find out what actually happened to Lydia (this is made clear when we’re left to interpret her demise to ourselves) however I felt the set up from the beginning contradicts this. The initial investigation, Nathan’s beef with Jack and Marilyn believing someone else has something to do with her death implies we’re perhaps going to get a “whodunnit” type of thriller which is very far from what ends up happening. There were also many occasions where I felt that the kind of journey Celeste wanted to take us one just wasn't translating and I constantly felt like there was something missing from this book but was unable to put my finger on what exactly that was. Lastly, I was unsure as to the relevance of Jack’s character being in love with Nathan. Other than to highlight he didn’t haven’t anything to do with Lydia’s death, I felt the realisation of Jack’s sexuality came too late in the book and if it was to be an integral part of the storyline should have been introduced much earlier. This choice therefore felt rather throw away for me.
To conclude, I think I would still recommend this book as it opens up a lot of pathways for discussion and would be a great book to suggest for a book club (which is why I was reading it) but in terms of my personal feelings towards it I can’t confidently say it's a book to get excited over.
Unfortunately there were quite a few aspects of this novel I personally just couldn’t get on board with. I don't believe the purpose of this book was to find out what actually happened to Lydia (this is made clear when we’re left to interpret her demise to ourselves) however I felt the set up from the beginning contradicts this. The initial investigation, Nathan’s beef with Jack and Marilyn believing someone else has something to do with her death implies we’re perhaps going to get a “whodunnit” type of thriller which is very far from what ends up happening. There were also many occasions where I felt that the kind of journey Celeste wanted to take us one just wasn't translating and I constantly felt like there was something missing from this book but was unable to put my finger on what exactly that was. Lastly, I was unsure as to the relevance of Jack’s character being in love with Nathan. Other than to highlight he didn’t haven’t anything to do with Lydia’s death, I felt the realisation of Jack’s sexuality came too late in the book and if it was to be an integral part of the storyline should have been introduced much earlier. This choice therefore felt rather throw away for me.
To conclude, I think I would still recommend this book as it opens up a lot of pathways for discussion and would be a great book to suggest for a book club (which is why I was reading it) but in terms of my personal feelings towards it I can’t confidently say it's a book to get excited over.
lalawoman416's review against another edition
5.0
Such a heavy book. It's for anyone who has ever felt the weight of expectations or the weight of their otherness or the weight of their broken dreams.
James is a Chinese American growing up in the 1950s, ashamed of being different, wanting nothing more than to just fit in. Marilyn is a white girl growing up in the 1950s who wants nothing more than to go to Radcliffe/Harvard and be a doctor. At Harvard, they meet, they fall in love, and just like that Marilyn becomes a suburban housewife and James is shunned from top tier academia because of his race.
Fast forward to the 70s whwre they're raising their biracial children in a small town in Ohio. Marilyn wants nothing more than for her daughter, Lydia, to be the doctor she never could be. James wants his son, Nath, to be the popular kid that he never could be. And they both neglect their youngest child.
Little do Marilyn and James know that their dreams, hopes, and aspirations are not in line with their children's. At the begining of the book you find out that Lydia has drowned in the town lake. James and Lydia have to come to terms with what this means, how it happened, how they missed all the signs.
It's such a heavy, heavy book but with themes that are so important for any parent. So important to be self reflective and insightful of those weights we carry and make other people carry.
James is a Chinese American growing up in the 1950s, ashamed of being different, wanting nothing more than to just fit in. Marilyn is a white girl growing up in the 1950s who wants nothing more than to go to Radcliffe/Harvard and be a doctor. At Harvard, they meet, they fall in love, and just like that Marilyn becomes a suburban housewife and James is shunned from top tier academia because of his race.
Fast forward to the 70s whwre they're raising their biracial children in a small town in Ohio. Marilyn wants nothing more than for her daughter, Lydia, to be the doctor she never could be. James wants his son, Nath, to be the popular kid that he never could be. And they both neglect their youngest child.
Little do Marilyn and James know that their dreams, hopes, and aspirations are not in line with their children's. At the begining of the book you find out that Lydia has drowned in the town lake. James and Lydia have to come to terms with what this means, how it happened, how they missed all the signs.
It's such a heavy, heavy book but with themes that are so important for any parent. So important to be self reflective and insightful of those weights we carry and make other people carry.
bonnie_smith's review against another edition
3.0
It could be better...
I kept waiting for the plot to thicken, and even when it did, I was still super disappointed.
I didn’t care for the characters, at all. I didn’t care much if any of it.
It was alright, she did a great job at character development, even though that had very little to do with the main character herself.
I wouldn’t read it again, or recommend to a friend. But I’ve certainly read worse books
I kept waiting for the plot to thicken, and even when it did, I was still super disappointed.
I didn’t care for the characters, at all. I didn’t care much if any of it.
It was alright, she did a great job at character development, even though that had very little to do with the main character herself.
I wouldn’t read it again, or recommend to a friend. But I’ve certainly read worse books
david_slack110507's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I read this book for my A-Level English Literature coursework (as well as reading Wide Sargasso Sea for the coursework element of the course as well) and so I spent the majority of the summer putting nearly all of my reading motivation and progress into reading this book as well as annotating it and tabbing it which is much more than what I do for the other books I read and so hopefully explains the extra long time that the book took for me to read it especially because it is much shorter than my normal books.
In deeply analysing it, I feel like I have only enjoyed the book more because I really like this novel and that's quite shocking because while there is an initial plot of Lydia dying and the family trying to figure out how she died and once learning it was suicide, trying to figure out what drove her to that point and why, there isn't much plot outside of that and is almost entirely reliant on being driven by the characters at play. That's not a bad thing as the characters in the book are incredibly complex and interesting to read about, however, it's just not my usual style of a book as i usually have something plot focused or a mix between plot and character focus, but this didn't disappoint.
As I mentioned, the characters are all really complex and developed starting with the father, James, being ashamed of his Chinese identity and race all of his life, which has meant that all he has ever wanted is to fit in. At the same time, his wife, Marilyn has dreamed of becoming a doctor and standing out as a woman in at the time, a heavily male-dominated profession, but is unable to achieve these dreams as she soon becomes pregnant and has to focus on her family. These unfulfilled dreams of the parents are then pushed onto Lydia, their favourite daughter who they prioritise above everyone else in the family, yet she only wants to conform to what her parents want her to be to make them happy, particularly her mother, leaving Lydia without a fixed identity and having very few people who understand her and her situation. This favouritism then means that the other children, Nath, and in particular, Hannah are ignored not just by their parents but also by each other yet they are also their own characters as Nath is hellbent on escaping the family by going to Harvard despite it meaning that he'll have to leave his sister behind, whilst Hannah almost acts as an observer rather than a person, due to her noticing things when the other characters don't.
This creates a fascinating family dynamic that is explored in both the past, when Lydia was alive, and the present, following her death and we see how the family's attempt to appear normal begins to crack under the pressure and can't handle it anymore. The themes of expectations, belonging and alienation, race, gender roles, and secrets were all really interesting to see throughout the book and it felt like they were all handled really well and carefully too. I also really liked that, while we as the reader can infer why Lydia did what she did, even though it's never explicitly said, the characters are even more in the dark than us due to the divisions that were present in the family leading up to Lydia's death, and so never truly know what happened, giving a sense of reality and realism like so many cases have in which the families don't often get closure nor do they get all the details.
Overall, this was a really fun and interesting book to read that kept me constantly interested and I liked the variety of themes that it covered. The lack of a fixed ending but also having some optimism for the future worked as an ending that didn't cop out and have a happy ending as an easy solution to a really complex storyline and character dynamics.
In deeply analysing it, I feel like I have only enjoyed the book more because I really like this novel and that's quite shocking because while there is an initial plot of Lydia dying and the family trying to figure out how she died and once learning it was suicide, trying to figure out what drove her to that point and why, there isn't much plot outside of that and is almost entirely reliant on being driven by the characters at play. That's not a bad thing as the characters in the book are incredibly complex and interesting to read about, however, it's just not my usual style of a book as i usually have something plot focused or a mix between plot and character focus, but this didn't disappoint.
As I mentioned, the characters are all really complex and developed starting with the father, James, being ashamed of his Chinese identity and race all of his life, which has meant that all he has ever wanted is to fit in. At the same time, his wife, Marilyn has dreamed of becoming a doctor and standing out as a woman in at the time, a heavily male-dominated profession, but is unable to achieve these dreams as she soon becomes pregnant and has to focus on her family. These unfulfilled dreams of the parents are then pushed onto Lydia, their favourite daughter who they prioritise above everyone else in the family, yet she only wants to conform to what her parents want her to be to make them happy, particularly her mother, leaving Lydia without a fixed identity and having very few people who understand her and her situation. This favouritism then means that the other children, Nath, and in particular, Hannah are ignored not just by their parents but also by each other yet they are also their own characters as Nath is hellbent on escaping the family by going to Harvard despite it meaning that he'll have to leave his sister behind, whilst Hannah almost acts as an observer rather than a person, due to her noticing things when the other characters don't.
This creates a fascinating family dynamic that is explored in both the past, when Lydia was alive, and the present, following her death and we see how the family's attempt to appear normal begins to crack under the pressure and can't handle it anymore. The themes of expectations, belonging and alienation, race, gender roles, and secrets were all really interesting to see throughout the book and it felt like they were all handled really well and carefully too. I also really liked that, while we as the reader can infer why Lydia did what she did, even though it's never explicitly said, the characters are even more in the dark than us due to the divisions that were present in the family leading up to Lydia's death, and so never truly know what happened, giving a sense of reality and realism like so many cases have in which the families don't often get closure nor do they get all the details.
Overall, this was a really fun and interesting book to read that kept me constantly interested and I liked the variety of themes that it covered. The lack of a fixed ending but also having some optimism for the future worked as an ending that didn't cop out and have a happy ending as an easy solution to a really complex storyline and character dynamics.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Cursing, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Suicide, Violence, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Bullying, Homophobia, Rape, Vomit, Stalking, Cultural appropriation, Alcohol, and Classism
ahw241's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
looweezb's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
potterskull's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
farahsarish's review against another edition
3.0
This book was beautifully written, but the characters were all unlikeable to me and I felt that a lot of them were underdeveloped. More like 2.5 stars.