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The Washington Post ’s Notable Books of the Year—Fiction • Entertainment Weekly ’s 10 Best Books of 2017 • People magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2017 • NPR’s Best Books of 2017 • Esquire ’s Best Books of 2017 • The Guardian ’s Best Books of 2017 picked by Paula Hawkins and Mariella Frostrup • Southern Living ’s Best Books of the Year • GQ ’s Best Books of the Year • Paste ’s Best Novels of 2017 • The Huffington Post ’s Best Fiction Books of 2017 • Bustle ’s Best Fiction of 2017 • BuzzFeed ’s 24 Best Fiction Books of 2017 • Kirkus Reviews ’ Best Fiction Books of the Year—Fictional Families • St. Louis Post-Dispatch Favorite Books of 2017 • Book of the Month Club, Best Book of the Year Finalist • Goodreads’ Best Fiction Books of 2017
“Witty, wise, and tender. It’s a marvel.”
—Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water
“Witnessing these two families as they commingle and clash is an utterly engrossing, often heartbreaking, deeply empathetic experience.... It’s this vast and complex network of moral affiliations... that make this novel even more ambitious and accomplished than her debut.... It is a thrillingly democratic use of omniscience, and, for a novel about class, race, family, and the dangers of the status quo, brilliantly apt.... The magic of this novel lies in its power to implicate all of its characters—and likely many of its readers—in that innocent delusion [of a post-racial America]. Who set the little fires everywhere? We keep reading to find out, even as we suspect that it could be us with ash on our hands.”
— The New York Times Book Review
“[Ng] captures her setting with an ethnologist’s authority.... and there are time-capsule pleasures in her evocation of 1997.... The writing is poised.”
— The Wall Street Journal
“Delectable and engrossing... A complex and compulsively readable suburban saga that is deeply invested in mothers and daughters... What Ng has written, in this thoroughly entertaining novel, is a pointed and persuasive social critique, teasing out the myriad forms of privilege and predation that stand between so many people and their achievement of the American dream. But there is a heartening optimism, too. This is a book that believes in the transformative powers of art and genuine kindness—and in the promise of new growth, even after devastation, even after everything has turned to ash.”
— The Boston Globe
“Shaker Heights may be a place where ‘things were peaceful, and riots and bombs and earthquakes were quiet thumps, muffled by distance.’ But the real world is never as far away as it seems, of course. And if the scrim can’t be broken, sometimes you have to burn it down. Grade: A–.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“Stellar... The plot is tightly structured, full of echoes and convergence, the characters bound together by a growing number of thick, overlapping threads.... Ng is a confident, talented writer, and it’s a pleasure to inhabit the lives of her characters and experience the rhythms of Shaker Heights through her clean, observant prose.... There’s a lovely, balanced, dioramic quality to this novel... all while keeping the story moving at a thriller’s pace.”
— Los Angeles Times
“Riveting... Unearthing the ways that race, class, motherhood, and belonging intersect to shape each individual.”
— Chicago Tribune
“Celeste Ng has a carpenter’s sure touch in constructing nested, interconnected plots.... There are few novelists writing today who are as wise, compassionate, and unsparing as Ng, about the choices you make, the ones you don’t, and the price you might pay for missed lives.”
— Financial Times
“Sharp and entertaining—you can’t look away even when things are crashing and burning (literally).”
—Goop
“Opposites attract and also ignite in this thoughtful novel.”
— People
“Ng writes with the wisdom of a hundred lives lived.”
— Harper’s Bazaar
“[Ng] probes privilege and the compromises it requires in a riveting novel.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine
“After you’ve raced to the end of the book, you’ll want to read it again, to take the ideas and hold them up to the harsh light of 2017. This novel will do what any good piece of fiction does: illuminate.”
—NPR (Best Books of 2017)
“Like Everything I Never Told You , Ng’s excellent debut, the book plots its way into a smart, accessible conversation about race and class. But free of the restraints of Everything ’s thriller construction, Little Fires gives Ng the space and patience to confront how progressive-minded communities approach identity.”
—GQ.com
“A meditation on the unspoken pains and contradictions of motherhood. Its story unspools all the raw, knotted tensions that go into making a family.”
—Refinery29
“Unmissable... Ng’s psychological insight is acute, yet generous.... Little Fires Everywhere examines the cruelties that we unwittingly inflict on those we claim to love.”
—HuffPost (Best Fiction Books of 2017)
“Takes unerring aim at upper-middle-class America’s blind spots... A nuanced study of mothers and daughters and the burden of not belonging to our families or our communities.”
— Vogue
“Totally absorbing, each character drawn so well it makes it impossible to decide whose side you’re on.”
— Marie Claire
“Ng reminds us that action is a choice, and you’ll want to keep reading until the last irreversible actions play out.”
— Bustle
“ Little Fires Everywhere might just be the signpost that we need, pointing a way forward with the gentle suggestion that sometimes doing the right thing means breaking some rules.”
— Paste
“Compelling.”
— Vox
“Ng’s taut class drama is calibrated for fireworks.”
— New York Magazine (Books to Read This Fall)
“Written with deep empathy and vivid characters who feel true to life, Little Fires Everywhere is a captivating, insightful examination of motherhood, identity, family, privilege, perfectionism, obsession, and the secrets about ourselves we try to hide.”
— Buzzfeed
“Engrossing... With each revelation, Little Fires Everywhere grows more propulsive and insightful, boring through the placid surface of American suburbia.”
— The Dallas Morning News
“Ng has one-upped herself.... A finely wrought meditation on the nature of motherhood and the dangers of privilege and a cautionary tale about how even the tiniest of secrets can rip families apart.... Ng is a master at pushing us to look at our personal and societal flaws in the face and see them with new eyes.... If Little Fires Everywhere doesn’t give you pause and help you think differently about humanity and this country’s current state of affairs, start over from the beginning and read the book again.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“As she did so well in Everything I Never Told You , Ng crafts sympathetic backstories for the characters that make their decisions understandable if not entirely acceptable. She... raise[s] questions about what mothers can give and what their children need when no one can stick to the rules.”
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“A haunting, layered story of mothers and daughters, and how they attract and repel each other.”
— The Seattle Times
“A multilayered, tightly focused and expertly plotted narrative... A deeply impressive novel with the power to provoke and entrance.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
“One of the best novels of the fall... Everything I Never Told You was good, but this is better.”
—AARP.org
“Once again, Ng has delivered a near-perfect novel.”
—BookRiot
“An intricate and captivating portrait of an eerily perfect suburban town with its dark undertones not-quite-hidden from view... Ng explores the complexities of adoption, surrogacy, abortion, privacy, and class, questioning all the while who earns, who claims, and who loses the right to be called a mother.... An impressive accomplishment.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Ng’s stunning second novel is a multilayered examination of how identities are forged and maintained, how families are formed and friendships tested, and how the notion of motherhood is far more fluid than bloodlines would suggest.... [A] tour de force.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“This incandescent portrait of suburbia and family, creativity, and consumerism burns bright.... The characters she creates here are wonderfully appealing, and watching their paths connect—like little trails of flame leading inexorably toward one another to create a big inferno—is mesmerizing, casting into new light ideas about creativity and consumerism, parenthood and privilege.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Spectacular sophomore work... a magnificent, multilayered epic that’s perfect for eager readers and destined for major award lists.”
— Library Journal (starred review)
“With brilliance and beauty, Celeste Ng dissects a microcosm of American society just when we need to see it beneath the microscope: how do questions of race stack up against the comfort of privilege, and what role does that play in parenting? Is motherhood a bond forged by blood, or by love? And perhaps most importantly: do the faults of our past determine what we deserve in the future? Be ready to be wowed by Ng’s writing—and unsettled by the mirror held up to one’s own beliefs.”
—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and Leaving Time
“ Little Fires Everywhere takes us deep into other people’s homes and lives and darkest corners. Along the way, Celeste Ng is always witty, engrossing, unsparing, and original.”
—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings
“ Little Fires Everywhere is a dazzlingly protean work—a comedy of manners that doubles as a social novel and reads like a thriller. By turns wry, heartrending, and gimlet-eyed, it confirms Celeste Ng’s genius for gripping literary fiction.”
—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes
“ Little Fires Everywhere showcases what makes Celeste Ng such a masterful writer.... By looking so closely at this community, she opens up the entire world.”
—Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang and Perfect Little World
“[A] powerful work about parenthood and politics, adolescent strife and artistic ambition, and the stark choice between conformity and community.”
—Rumaan Alam, author of Rich and Pretty
“I cracked open this book mid-morning and did not even move again until it was time to turn on a light. What a joy it was to be so thoroughly taken.... Little Fires Everywhere is a deft, smoldering masterpiece.”
—Mira Jacob, author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing
“As I read Celeste Ng’s second novel I found myself thinking, again and again: How does she know so much? About all of us? How does she write with such perception, such marvelous grace, such daring and generosity? Little Fires Everywhere has the irresistible pace of an expertly tuned thriller, and the observational brilliance of lasting literature. It marks Celeste Ng as a writer of the first rank, among the very best in her generation.”
—Joe Hill, author of The Fireman and Heart-Shaped Box
“Celeste Ng is a powerful and poignant writer whose attention to detail is pitch-perfect. Her intuitive rendering of how and why people behave in such unflattering ways is important.”
—Terry McMillan, author of I Almost Forgot About You
“Un-put-downable... A must read for book clubs.”
—POPSUGAR