Everything I Never Told You

"If we know this story, we haven't seen it yet in American fiction, not until now . . . Ng has set two tasks in this novel's doubled heart-to be exciting, and to tell a story bigger than whatever is behind the crime. She does both by turning the nest of familial resentments into at least four smaller, prickly mysteries full of secrets the family members won't share . . . What emerges is a deep, heartfelt portrait of a family struggling with its place in history, and a young woman hoping to be the fulfillment of that struggle. This is, in the end, a novel about the burden of being the first of your kind-a burden you do not always survive." -Alexander Chee, The New York Times Book Review

"Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family, Ng's explosive debut chronicles the plight of Marilyn and James Lee after their favored daughter is found dead in a lake." -Entertainment Weekly

"Excellent . . . an accomplished debut . . . heart-wrenching . . . Ng deftly pulls together the strands of this complex, multigenerational novel. Everything I Never Told You is an engaging work that casts a powerful light on the secrets that have kept an American family together-and that finally end up tearing it apart." -Los Angeles Times

"Tender and merciless all at once . . . Vital in all the essential ways." -Jesmyn Ward

"Wonderfully moving . . . Emotionally precise . . . A beautifully crafted study of dysfunction and grief . . . [This book] will resonate with anyone who has ever had a family drama." -Boston Globe

"A powerhouse of a debut novel, a literary mystery crafted out of shimmering prose and precise, painful observation about racial barriers, the burden of familial expectations, and the basic human thirst for belonging . . . Ng's novel grips readers from page one with the hope of unraveling the mystery behind Lydia's death-and boy does it deliver, on every front." -Huffington Post

"A subtle meditation on gender, race and the weight of one generation's unfulfilled ambitions upon the shoulders-and in the heads-of the next . . . Ng deftly and convincingly illustrates the degree to which some miscommunications can never quite be rectified." -San Francisco Chronicle

"Cleverly crafted, emotionally perceptive . . . Ng sensitively dramatizes issues of gender and race that lie at the heart of the story . . . Ng's themes of assimilation are themselves deftly interlaced into a taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense." -O, The Oprah Magazine