Everything I Never Told You

Genre: Fiction

This is the story of the Lee family living in a small town in Ohio in the 1970’s. Marilyn is white and falls in love with James, a Chinese-American, and a professor at a local college. Their children, Nathan, the oldest, is in high school and Hannah is their youngest. Lydia their middle daughter, by all accounts the parents’ favorite, has died and her death sends this family into a tail spin, in particular because it is not clear exactly what happened to her. We learn about both Marilyn and James and their childhoods, what they had hoped for themselves and now, their hopes for their children. We learn about the children and how living with their parents’ expectations has affected them. Through beautiful storytelling we learn what really happens to Lydia and what happens to a family trying to recover from the loss of one of their own and coming to grips with who they really are.

This book afforded me such an aha moment.. I foolishly believed that stories, the human stories, have beginnings and ends. That, “Once Upon a Time” actually exists, but it doesn’t! There is no once, there is no beginning! And for that matter, there is no ending! Who we are does not begin with the day we were born. Who we are does not even begin with the day our parents were born. Or their parents. Or their parents. The story of Lydia and what happens to her unfolds so beautifully through her mother’s experiences, her father’s experiences, her grandparents’ experiences. Who she is is a sum-total of who they were and are. The title of this book rings so true to me as I think about what this means for me and my children and it is this: telling them the story of who I am, who their father is, and who their grandparents are and were is so important for understanding who they are. And then, one day, they will decide which parts (from us) they will want to hang on to and what parts they'll want to let go of.

This story, despite being a little slow in the middle, is so very well written. It’s my favorite kind of book: it’s entertaining and I learned so much from it. I highly recommend this one.