This is quite a hard book to review.  It’s basically the story of two families.  The Richardson’s are long established in Shaker Heights, both parents work, one a journalist; one a lawyer and they have four children at high school, all close in age.  The perfect American family.   Enter Mia and her daughter, Pearl.  They are itinerant travelers, having lived in 46 places in Pearl’s 15 years.  Mia is an artist, a photographer to be precise, who sells her photographs through a gallery in New […]

There are a lot of layers involved in Ng’s award winning novel and Little Fires Everywhere employs one of my least favorite tricks- starting in the present with the climatic event before restarting at the true beginning of the story. Mrs. Richardson, a wealthy journalist in the Utopian town of Shaker Heights, wakes up to her house in flames; she was sleeping in after a rough day involving her tenant leaving the apartment she rented and the reader is treated to the events that led to both the […]

So three books came out this year that deal with trans-racial adoption…and somehow they all have the exact same plot. And two have the exact same ending. So that’s annoying. This book is good, mostly. It’s hard to deal with a topical topic and and then have that topic explored in almost exactly the same terms as other books. This book is well-written and the main plotline is interesting and well-handled. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Ann Patchett, domestic-ish, dealing with […]