Reading Between The Spines Book Club discussion

Little Fires Everywhere

Our book of the month is Little Fires Everywhere! We'll be discussing it at the end of November/Beginning of December.

Ooooh I have this book! Hopefully I can squeeze it into my TBR 😁

Emandherbooks wrote: "Ooooh I have this book! Hopefully I can squeeze it into my TBR 😁"

That would be great - thank you for joining us.

I finally got started on this! Only at chapter 4 but I think I'm going to like it!

Chloe wrote: "I finally got started on this! Only at chapter 4 but I think I'm going to like it!"

That's really exciting! I am yet to start.

I also have this book! I’ll try my best to read it this month!

Serena wrote: "I also have this book! I’ll try my best to read it this month!"

That would be great!

I read this one earlier in the year but cant wait to join in with the discussion :)

Hi Everyone – We had our chat about November’s book Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng today and here is my summary of our discussion and feelings around the book (minus some of the tangents onto good films which we thought of while reading the book). We opened the chat by giving the book our rating out of 5 – there was a very mixed reaction to the book but it averaged out at 3/5 across the group.

A problem raised at the start (and re-emerged through the chat) was the pacing – many of us found it slow to start and reckoned could have been condensed – Marianne and I preferred the Adult bits and the court case, while Chloe enjoyed the teen romances, bringing us to the first proper question of the group chat – Who should have kept the baby? It was roughly 4 in favour of Bebe and 1 in favour of the McCulloughs, although we all found each had a strong case and could sympathise to some degree with each party. We felt that the authorities could have handled it better, and that everyone had the little girl’s best interests at heart and could all offer her different things, while also having some drawbacks (Brittney objected to the state Bebe left the baby girl in, and the lack of racial awareness of the McCulloughs was not great) which meant that there was no clear path or solution that would be truly satisfactory, particularly as all wished for the best future for the baby. Mia running away with Pearl rather than giving her to the Ryans, we found more confusing, with Chloe sympathising with Mia more than Bebe, and myself and Brittney finding it a bit less explicable or understandable.

Following on from this we leapt into a discussion of the younger characters – None of us found them particularly likable. Izzy we felt to be a big problem – the leap to burning the house down was not satisfactorily explained and Marianne highlighted that in a book of complex characters Izzy felt very much the archetype of Rebellious Teen™ with little by the way of character development. Lexie was the favourite of our group and we felt the abortion narrative was handled well. Moody we unanimously declared annoying and awful (albeit interesting for it) as he emerged as a Nice Guy™ over the course of the book. He viewed Pearl as his and when she lives her life in a way that doesn’t go how he wants he effectively throughs her under the bus and tries to destroy everything in retaliation – a trait which he shared with his mother and her response to Mia, despite his narrative at the start of the book declaring himself so different from the rest of his family. Marianne highlighted that despite the limited stage time Moody got, we all had very strong reactions and opinions towards him, reinforcing the earlier opinion on pacing, and leading to Marianne to point out how many of the more minor characters were in fact very interesting – focusing on Liz, the doctor who had been Elena’s university friend. She was well-written and very important to the character development of Elena- highlighting her score-keeping attitude of “I helped you at university so you owe me” and entitlement which is seen in Moody’s relationship with Pearl. I also found the exchange between Liz and Elena enlightening as it showed how much my dislike for the Richardsons was a deliberate creation of Ng.

Thus ended our discussion of Little Fires Everywhere. We are putting together a few questions for folk here on Goodreads which came up through our chat and preparing for our December book If we were villains by M.L.Rio.

Hi guys! Here are some questions for those of you who have read the book and would like to join in the conversation. The questions are just prompts, most of which are based on what we talked about in our discussion earlier. Feel free to pick and choose the ones you'd like to answer, or ignore them completely if you'd just like to give your opinion on the book. We’re basically just excited to hear your thoughts!

~Writing~
What do you think were the novel’s strengths and weaknesses?
What did you think of the writing style?

~Themes~
What do you think the message of the novel was, if there was one?
How do you think themes such as race, gender, and class were handled in the novel?
What about other themes such as motherhood, ownership, and coming of age, and how these themes interconnected with the aforementioned themes of race, gender and class?
!!!Big discussion point!!! Who do you think should have been given custody of the baby?

~Characters~
Who was your favourite and least favourite character, and why?
Who was the most interesting character?
Did any minor characters get your attention?
Did you prefer when the story focused on the teen characters, or on the adults?
What did you think of the teen characters?
What did you think of the adult characters?
What did you think of Mia’s backstory?
How did you find the romances?

~Other~
How would you rate the novel?
Are there any other novels/short stories/films/graphic novels etc that came to mind when you were reading this novel? (Get Out, The Scarlet Letter, and Easy A all came up in our discussion!)
Do you have any other thoughts on the novel?

We look forward to hearing from you! :)