The Story
Celeste Ng’s debut novel begins with a death – that of 16 year old Lydia Lee, daughter of Chinese-American James and all-American Marilyn. But is it suicide, murder or a simple accident? Ng takes us on a multi-generational exhumation of the dead girl’s family history before revealing the answer.
Prior to Lydia’s death in 1977, the family lives a superficially ordinary, humdrum existence in middle America. But beneath the surface, dissatisfaction bubbles, fueled by James’s insecurity in his Chinese origins and Marilyn’s frustration at abandoning her lofty ambitions.
The racial divide does not stop James and Marilyn from being genuinely happy at first, although James’s cultural inferiority complex included an element of incredulity that a woman such as Marilyn could be interested in him. Marilyn’s mother, however, is appalled at her daughter’s choice of husband, so race insinuates itself into the relationship from the beginning.
Despite the alienation of Marilyn’s mother, she and James look set for happiness and glittering prizes – he as lecturer at Harvard and she destined for great things in medicine. Things sour somewhat when first James fails to land the expected lectureship and Marilyn falls pregnant and abandons her studies. Instead of the kudos of Harvard, James has to accept a job at an undistinguished Ohio college and so a life of boring suburbia beckons.
Things do not go off the rails immediately – Nathan is born and then two years later Lydia arrives. But their lives are circumscribed by their isolated existence in a small town with few, if any, friends. James continues to struggle with his racial identity : having been embarrassed by his blue-collar Chinese parentage as a child, he effectively disowned his ancestry after their deaths. He also takes every casual racial slight to heart and cannot integrate successfully into American life. Meanwhile Marilyn becomes increasingly frustrated with her role as housewife – a role she swore never to embrace having seen it so suffocatingly enacted by her mother. This frustration leads to the family’s first major crisis when Marilyn abandons her family without warning to resume her studies.
Marilyn’s disappearance throws James insecurities into sharp focus – why did he think she could ever have loved a man like him. The children are devastated but James barely notices. Marilyn struggles with her decision but doesn’t give way until she discovers that she is pregnant for the third time. Ambition thwarted once again, she returns home.
Although the family are back together, this seismic event brings psychological devastation in its wake. Lydia is paralysed with fear that her mother might leave again and vows to do anything to avoid it. Marilyn, meanwhile, becomes fixated with the idea that Lydia will be the glittering academic success that she should have been…and so the family’s ambitions come to rest on Lydia’s narrow shoulders. The other children are increasingly disregarded as Marilyn’s attention is consumed by Lydia’s education.
James notices this but says nothing for a long time. His inferiority complex is reinforced when he takes Nathan out into the world. History repeats itself as Nathan, in his turn, endures the casual cruelty of other children and comes to understand that he is, somehow, different. Rather than stand up for his son, James cringes in shame – as memories of his own childhood experiences painfully resurface. Nathan, for his part, deals with his social exclusion by reaching for the stars..literally – astronomy becomes his favourite hobby. He will, in time join the space program which so enthrals him.
As Lydia grows through her teens the relentless pressure of Marilyn’s ambitions become progressively insupportable. Lydia is not the genius of Marilyn’s imagination. She begins to crumble as exam results decline but Marilyn is determined that it is only a case of more work, more effort. Lydia comes to understand that she has made a prison for herself by her determination never to give her mother any grounds to leave her again.
Whilst struggling to fulfil her mother’s dreams, Lydia has been living a bigger lie. Friendless at school, despite her more American appearance, she spends her evenings talking into a dead telephone line. Like two wise monkeys, neither parent ever suspects – although the children do. Little Hannah, especially, whose mind is too young to understand, simply knows it in her bones.
Some sort of disaster is inevitable as panic-stricken Lydia approaches critical exams that she cannot pass. She seeks relief from the familial pressure-cooker by hanging out with Jack, cool all-American teen and reputed school Lothario. But Jack has an incendiary secret of his own and Lydia’s attempted act of rebellion fails like everything else.
Defeated on all sides, Lydia resolves to end the years of pretence and start life anew – based on her wishes, her desires. But this decision seems to require a symbolic initiation. Lydia sneaks out late one night, seen only by little Hannah, and heads to the town lake where the children had spent their summers. It was by this lake years before that she had taken that fateful decision to be her mother’s surrogate. That time she had been pushed into the lake by Nathan and some part of her wanted to sink (she never learned to swim) to escape the years of strife that she knew were to come. Nathan had rescued her on that occasion, but now she is alone.
Lydia rows the solitary row-boat into the middle of the lake. Then, in the most mystical and ambiguous scene in the book, she steps into the water, apparently determined to make the short swim to the pier and begin life anew…
Lydia’s disappearance blows the lid off the pressure cooker of the Lee family’s suppressed resentments. James accuses Marilyn of browbeating her daughter into misery. She accuses James of being spineless and subservient in the face of her daughters possible abduction. James reacts by running off with his teaching assistant, Nathan tries to drown his sorrows in whisky. He also confronts Jack, who he is sure has a hand in Lydia’s disappearance – but finally understands that Jack’s is more interested in him than in his sister.
In the final chapter, with Lydia dead and buried, the family begin a gradual process of reconciliation. Things long unsaid are finally acknowledged. James and Marilyn finally notice their remaining children. The tragedy of Lydia will stay with them all till the end of their days but life will get better. Somehow Lydia’s sacrifice has redeemed the family and life, however different, can begin again.
What did it all Mean ?
The book starts with a tragic, unexplained death. How to account for this tragedy ? – that is the central preoccupation of the story. The search for an explanation takes us into many difficult areas : racism, sexism, alienation, social isolation, frustrated dreams and living vicariously through your children, for starters.
Post-war America itself seems to be in the dock. This is a nation of casual racism and sexism where women and minority groups are marginalised by the prevailing WASP culture. James Lee spends a lifetime trying to ‘fit in’ but becomes progressively embittered at his inability to do so. Marilyn resents a male-dominated culture which, at least in part, frustrated her ambition to become a doctor. Habitual racial slights have a particularly corrosive effect on James who is forever on guard for the next insult. History repeats itself as Nathan in his turn becomes the butt of children’s pranks.
James and Marilyn respond to their life of disappointments by withdrawal, in effect ostracizing themselves from society. The children inherit this siege mentality, clinging to each other out there in the big bad world. Even Marilyn’s desertion of the family could be viewed as a reaction to a claustrophobic society that had frustrated her dreams.
Ng uses the phrase, known to every chemistry student, ‘to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’, more than once in the book. Can the determinism implied in this phrase be applied to people as well as chemicals? Lydia’s reaction to her mother’s flight is to cling ever tighter by agreeing to her every wish. But the deceit at the heart of Lydia’s conformity can only end badly. The catalyst – an exam she cannot pass – leads Lydia inexorably to her fate on the lake. QED ?
Well, not quite. Whilst America undoubtedly had many faults it did not push Lydia off the rowboat. And human beings are more than their chemical constituents. James, for example had choices in the face of the racism he experienced. It was his choice to renounce his ancestry, to try to become more American than the Americans.
It is generally unfair to criticise writers for what their books are not about. But there is a glaring hole at the centre of this story. The Lee family lived through a tumultuous era in American history. In 1955 whilst James was silently suffering the barbs of his white fellow-students, Rosa Parks defied the establishment by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1968 when James was cringing at the racism meted out to his son, Martin Luther King was shot dead for demanding equality for all American citizens. In short, the civil rights movement was in full swing and people were dying for their belief in equality. The point is that even in the face of the worst oppression people have choices – you can fight, you don’t have to submit. But this does not seem to have occurred to James, and it is not mentioned anywhere in the book.
Marilyn too had choices. As an attractive, brilliant young woman she exerted her independence by marrying someone from an ethnic minority in the face of her mother’s bigotry. Yet when James, who would hardly say boo to a goose, insists that she abandon her hopes of becoming a doctor she acquiesces without a fight. Thus the Lee’s must surely accept some degree of responsibility for their predicament.
Neither can Marilyn’s ferocious ambition for her daughter be laid at society’s feet. However unlikely Marilyn’s inability to understand her daughter; or her disregard for the other children – only she can be held accountable for the path she set Lydia upon. Or, perhaps James can share the guilt, as he partially understood but said nothing until it was too late.
Nor did Lydia have to cleave so tightly to her mother’s wishes. She could, instead have told her mother how she really felt. So, at every stage there were choices: this was not chain reaction with a pre-determined outcome. What was missing was honesty, candour…the courage to say what you really feel and to deal with the consequences. ‘To thine own self be true’, as boring old Polonius put in Hamlet.
The one character in the book who seems to live by this principle is Jack. Gay at a time when homosexuality could still lead to imprisonment over much of the US, he seems the person most at ease with himself in the book. Yes he is scared that Lydia might reveal his secret when he finally tells her – but he still tries to follow his feelings rather than deny them.
So who or what killed Lydia Lee ? The system ? Racism ? Fear ? Conformity? Something else, or all of the above ? I leave that to my fellow book clubbers to debate.
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