It’s Monday or as my morning has proven: Three Tylenol and a Tums Day. That is another story for another Monday involving travel and mystery.
Today involves a book review. Don’t worry. It’s not my book. I belong to a book club, Novel Friends. I love the name, members, and the books (most of them).
Last month we read Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng. I can remember how to spell that name. Her plot was interesting and her descriptions were healthy, real, spot on. This reader was caught in the beginning as I assume most were. Who set the fire? Ng takes you through the fires within each character and how these hot spots affect others everywhere. An amazing idea, which I wish I had thought of. Most authors explain how main characters interact with others, but she pin points how the actions of one determines the decisions of others.
Mia, a housekeeper, “corralled the crumbs” off the kitchen counter as she listens to her employer’s children. They had dismissed her out of mind. I find that I too, gather our crumbs while I take in others’ conversations, the scenes through the window, and TV news, dismissed by others. Great detective technique.
More importantly, Mia later offers a definition of a child. Hopefully, Ng will forgive this free ad. It’s beautifully written.
“To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once.”
“You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she’d been and the child she’d become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image.”
Now, that’s great writing.
Enough
Eleanor Tatum 
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