Maybe, it is not necessary to recommend this novel. After all, it appeared in 2017 already, and it was even turned into a TV mini-series. But I happen to have read it only now, some time after I finished and summarized the author’s subsequent book, Our Missing Hearts (2022). Perhaps there are some other readers who were too young or too busy to turn to Little Fires Everywhere. So, I think a brief description might benefit them.

Although the title speaks of “little fires,” the book culminates in a huge fire, when the six-bedroom luxurious house of the Richardson family goes up in flames. The house is in Shakers Heights, a planned community, city, and suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. This is where most of the action takes place, which includes its High School (in fact, Celeste Ng had lived in Shakers Heights and attended its High School).

            Mia Warren, a very talented artistic photographer who, years earlier, had to drop out of the New York School of Arts when her first-year scholarship could for financial reasons not been extended, and her intellectually gifted teenage daughter, Pearl, arrived at Shakers Heights in the 1990s. Renting part of a Duplex from the Richardson family was supposed to end their itinerant lives, travelling from place to place, depending on Mia’s photography projects. Mia financed those projects by often working in two part-time jobs and occasionally selling her photographs through a New York art gallery.

            Mrs. Elena Richardson, her landlady, lives in the house mentioned above. She shares it with her lawyer husband and four teen age children: Lexie, Trip, Moody, and the unconventional and rebellious Izzy, the youngest at 15 years. Elena is entirely conventional. Her big dream to become a great journalist ended by being a reporter at a local newspaper writing stories on local affairs. Her life is centered around rules, norms, and regulations, good and bad, and on creating social capital with all sorts of locally influential people. All her four kids attend Shaker Heights High School, where they are soon joined by Pearl. Moody and Pearl become close friends. They do many things together, but Moody soon feels that he is running out of ideas to satisfy Pearl’s curiosity. “This was how Moody made a decision he would question for the rest of his life” (p. 32)—he decided to introduce her to his family. From that point onwards, Pearl spends much time at the Richardson’s house with the other three teenagers. And Mrs. Richardson persuades Mia to take up cleaning and cooking tasks in her house. Pearl doesn’t like this because she wanted to escape the supervision of her mom. Mia, on the other hand, learns a great deal about the members of the family, for example, from what she finds in their garbage bins.

            One day, with their modern European history class, Moody and Pearl visit the local art museum, Pearl gets bored and starts wondering around to other rooms. She ends up in front of a photograph called Virgin and Child #1 (1982). Moody comes to look where Pearl was. Both are stunned of what they see: The woman in the picture is no one else than Pearls mother, Mia, holding her in her arms. When Lexie comes to pick them up, “her mouth fell open. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Pearl—that’s your mom. … That’s so crazy, Lexi said at last. ‘God, that’s so crazy. What’s your mom doing in a photo in an art museum? Is she secretly famous?’” (p. 95).

            At some point, Izzy, tired of her mom’s constant criticism, adopts Mia as her role model, learning the basics of photography from her. Pearl starts a sexual relationship with Trip. Lexie has an abortion and breaks up with her long-time boyfriend. Mia gets involved in a custody battle for a baby, because one of her colleagues at work, a Chinese woman with little knowledge of English, had abandoned her child at a fire station, placed in a cardboard box, but later changed her mind. Unfortunately, at that time, the authorities had already started an adoption procedure and placed the baby in the family of one of Mrs. Richardson’s oldest friends. Mr. Richardson becomes that family’s lawyer. Eventually, the judge decides against the mother. Izzy finds her crying her heart out in Mia’s kitchen. Izzy asks Mia how the mother can survive the loss of her baby. Mia’s answer is, “I don’t know, honestly. But she will. Sometimes, just when you think everything’s gone, you find a way. … Like after a prairie fire. I saw one, years ago, when we were in Nebraska. It seems like the end of the world. The earth is all scorched and black and everything green is gone. But after the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow” (p. 295).

            Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Richardson kicks Mia and Pearl out of their apartment. She gives them one day to pack up. Izzy, given her close relationship with Mia, is shocked when she arrives at Mia’s apartment for their joint photography work as usual only to find that the place is empty. She “turned Mia’s words over and over in her head. Sometimes you need to start over from scratch” (p. 316). “Scorched earth, she had said, and at that moment Izzy decided what she was going to do” (p. 323). While the Richardson’s house was burning, Izzy boarded a Greyhound bus headed for Pittsburgh. Among the things she had taken with her were the address of Mia’s parents and the name of the art gallery in New York through which Mia sold some of her work.

MHN

Nonthaburi, Thailand

18 January 2024