Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

This is an exact type of story I love: family drama, teenagers, dark secrets from the past, and a confrontation between interesting female characters. This novel feels like a classic realistic novel with a proper social commentary that still has a solid plot and well-written characters. Another thing that reminds me of a classic realistic novel is how Celeste Ng writes her characters: she gives us regular characters with their regular problems and adds a lot of depth to them. She shows us characters from different perspectives and doesn't paint them with only one color. It feels like reading this solid 19th-early 20th century novel with great potential for holywars: if you've ever seen people tearing each other apart because of War and Peace or The Forsyte Saga, you understand what I mean. 

Celeste Ng goes in the tons of gray areas and doesn't give readers an answer who is right and who is wrong. She doesn't try to simplify complicated problems or magically solve them with the right deeds or happy coincident. 

It's also is one of the main themes of the book: there is no this exactly right thing to do, every choice has its consequences even if it seems to be a good choice to make. 

Elena has this idea about "living a rightful life", she definitely thinks that the just-world hypothesis is true, and if you do the right choices, your life will be perfect. And from her point of view there is just one way to be happy, and there are clearly right and clearly wrong decisions without any gray areas between them (and Celeste Ng shows us how there are a lot of gray areas in person's life). I think Elena mad at Mia not only because Mia is different, and there is a classic conflict between stable bourgeois life and unstable creative freedom, but also because Mia does a lot of "wrong" choices and somehow still didn't die under the bridge. And Elena's hunting for Mia's past for me is just her way to find something horrible and shameful in Mia's past, to prove herself right. I think Elena was so eager to believe that Pearl did an abortion because it's exactly the thing that happens with people who aren't "doing right things". 

Mia's and Elena's characters are are strongest in the book. I think children's characters may be developed more. Anyway, I really like how Celeste Ng subverted our expectations with Trip and Moody and how she didn't turn Trip into a regular jerk because I feel like there is a trend in love triangles with "this bad lustful guy who only wants to fuck the girl" and "this pure good guy who has a deep emotional connection with a girl". Sometimes teenagers are just horny, and a girl wants this hot guy with no personality, and it's ok. 

Also, it's interesting how the book was built around maternity as a theme. It isn't plot-driven or character-driven, it seems to be created for discussion about maternity, and I don't mean it in a bad way. On the contrary, I extremely fascinated by how Celeste Ng can create a good narrative and believable characters without deviating from the main theme. 

5 out of 5 stars.