Thrillers are simple: just add (lake) water

Recipes come in all levels of difficulty. They could be as simple as mixing pre-made pasta with cheese powder and water, the concoction microwaved to perfection in 3 minutes, as in the case of Easy-Mac. Or they could involve more elaborate procedures, as in the case of monkey bread. This is where following the recipe is important; wander off the beaten path and your monkey bread will end up in Inferno. It’s safe to say that recipes, however complex or intuitive they are, give us spiritual guidance in the culinary world.

But recipes also have a place in the literary realm. Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, for example, shares some common traits with our methodic friend. Instead of food, Ng’s ingredients are plot devices, and her instructions are word usage. Ng takes some common television tropes—a housewife, a cheater, a melodramatic death, and a bad boy, to name a few—and, through careful preparation, transforms them into a unique and telling portrait of a small-town Ohio family.

Making instant-thrillers is like making instant-noodles: you need water and a lot of it.

On page one, we are greeted by a warming line: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” (Ng 1) By the end of the first chapter, we discover that Lydia has drowned in a lake. Then we get Lydia’s autopsy, which reads like a set of instructions for cutting up steak. This is most apparent in “The chest is opened using a Y-shaped incision,” (Ng 69) wherein coroner had literally sliced apart Lydia’s flesh, but it also manifests in the mood conveyed through Ng’s writing style. Unlike first person, the third person omniscient limits the reader’s access to the entirety of characters’ emotions, and Ng uses the third person omniscient to powerful effect in Lydia’s autopsy, which is as much a physical report as it is a telling reflection of Lydia’s upbringing. The autopsy says “The cause of [Lydia’s] death as asphyxia by drowning.” (Ng 69) The report’s detached voice mirrors James and Marilyn’s obliviousness towards Lydia’s inner turmoil. I mean, it’s hard when your mom be like “Lydia, y u no get good grades and become doctor!?” and your dad be like “Lydia, you need to be popular. Don’t be a loser like me and Nath.”

Clearly, Lydia had drowned under her parents’ expectations well before she drowned in the lake. (Shout out to Ng. Good play-on-words.) Similarly, the autopsy’s matter-of-fact tone puts the reader in the position of a bystander, who is just as guilty as the perpetrator for being unable to pull Lydia out of despair. Like instructions in a recipe, Ng’s eloquent writing compels the reader to react and relate to her characters according to how she presents them. No, this isn’t the Jedi mind trick, this is just good writing.

If composition provides a sense of direction for the novel, the primary ingredients in Everything I Never Told You are found in Ng’s diction. For one, Ng’s word economy is praiseworthy. One might even say that Ng has learned well from Will Strunk’s The Elements of Style, or the writer’s scripture:

Indeed, every word of Ng’s novel is telling, and every sentence is constructed to further the plot.

Regarding Marilyn, Ng writes, “She cradles the bag, sliding the straps over her shoulders, letting its weight hug her tight.” (Ng 119) Through concision and precision, Ng has crafted distinct images of her characters. The words “cradle” and “hugs” show Marilyn’s affection for her daughter. Marilyn’s longing is so extreme that she imposes the memory of Lydia onto the book bag. However, she is reluctant to acknowledge her daughter’s flaws. Ng writes that Marilyn “drops both [the condoms and the Marlboros], as if she has found a snake, and pushes the book bag out of her lap with a thud.” (Ng 120) The analogy equating condoms and Marlboros with a snake reveal Marilyn’s shock. Nuances like these convalesce into the overarching theme of the story, as raw ingredients in a stew.

A key element in recipes, though not afforded the limelight of main ingredients, are spices. Spices contribute to the flavor, texture, and smell of the final product, and Ng has wisely included this auxiliary piece in her book. Racial slurs and stereotypes are Ng’s literary spices, adding novelty to traditional American settings. For example, the word “Oriental” is thrown around, as in “The subject is a well-developed, well-nourished Oriental female.” (Ng 69) The word “Oriental” conjures images of jade buddhas and silk robes, not humans. In the novel’s context, it is used to illustrate the zeitgeist of suburban Ohio in the ‘70s and reflect the status of the Lee family.

The Lees, particularly James, struggle with the identity conveyed by “Oriental.” James’s internalized racism is arguably more dangerous to his family than Middlewood’s systematic racism. When Nath hears “Chink can’t find China” (Ng 90) in the swimming pool, James to slap his son for being weak. James’s disdain for the victim of racism rather than for the perpetrators show that he has become accustomed to discrimination. In fact, James and Marilyn favor Lydia above Nath and Hannah for the same reason: Lydia’s blue eyes erase, or at least diminish, her Asian heritage. Western beauty standards influence James and Marilyn’s view on their children and threaten to divide their family. (Parents, get over it. Your daughter is not a Barbie doll.) De facto racism permeates every aspect of life, forcing the victims into a corner. Like spices in a recipe, small instances of racism accumulate and play a definitive role in how the plot unfolds. 

Transcending the clichéd nature of its initial premise, Ng’s Everything I Never Told You is a recipe whose core ingredients mix in ingenious ways. The result is authenticity. Each character is deftly realized, and each event, however miniscule, adds to the overall plot. Through the interplay of the figurative and the literal, the questioning of race and identity, and the presence of seemingly trivial but definitive details, Ng has succeeded in crafting the delicate bond that holds the Lee family together and the tragedy that pulls them apart. And reading the story is like peeling an onion: lots of layers (of meaning) and lots of tears. Should we say that Celeste Ng has succeeded in cook-Ng up intrigue in her debut? I think we can.