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Clara Christensen
If you take each person and fold them forward like they were made of nothing but flimsy paper -- a picture-perfect cutout from a magazine -- on their flat, white backs, you will find their two cents. Their statement. Their monologue for the audience.
It could be a sentence. It could be an essay. What people tell us is only the very beginning of what they really think.
In my head, I picture it like when you are squeezing a lemon in your hand into a strainer or sieve of some kind. Along with lemon juice, seeds slip out of the fruit. They are caught by the strainer, but the juice slides right through it.
The seeds symbolize the nuggets of a person's "statement" that they share with the world, and the juice is just the rest of it. The predicate and verb of their sentence. The body paragraphs of their essay.
They spew these seeds out of their mouths like missiles to be planted in the fertile minds of the impressionable. After taking root, they grow and shift like a cancer.
The novel "Everything I Never Told You" is a portrait of the Lee family. In the foreground you can see their expressions -- usually bright "Brady Bunch" smiles -- warped into unsettling frowns; melted in a way.
Mixed into the paint used to craft the painting is the lemon juice from each family member's lemons -- souring the image. Within the puckered paint, the seeds are hidden. You must dip your clean hands into their wet, warped, sour paint to uncover them.
James and Marylin Lee live in a town in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. James Lee is a Chinese-American man who was born to immigrant parents. Marylin Lee is a white woman born to a Donna Reed wannabe. A Donna Reed wannabe without an Alex Stone -- to put it frankly.
Their three children are born into a prickly home. Brambles line the hallways. Thorns get caught on their clothes. Lemon trees are sprouting out of their parents’ heads -- full and swollen lemons hanging from the branches.
James and Marylin could not care less about their eldest son Nathan (Nath for short) or their youngest daughter Hannah.
However, it's a different story when it comes to Lydia, their middle child. They place her on a pedestal in a glass case in their own personal zoo with public tours that no one ever comes to. Both of them planted what they thought were their best seeds in Lydia's fecund head. It just about explodes with abundance.
The Lee family's sweet, obedient Lydia is dead. Now, this book is not a murder mystery; the focus is not really on "who-done-it." Lydia was basically the only thing holding this fragile family together.
In their town, the Lee family is a group of outsiders. People on the cusp. They just never clicked. To tell you more about this little town they live in, it would be impossible without mentioning the lake. This lake is central to the town and story in many ways. Nathan throws his lemon seeds into the lake like a rock he failed to skip on the surface of the water. Hannah buries her seeds deep into her own skin.
The book "Everything I Never Told You" is almost like a lake itself. The writing has longevity and carries itself like a thread of seaweed or algae on a current.
When reading, you are submerged in the confined world author Celeste Ng has written for you. Your hand is guided to turn the page because you are desperate to find out what happens next. Overall, a gripping, sensitive tale of family and their only supporting banister, Lydia.
Lemon trees can sprout out of sandy lake bottoms. Lemon trees can sprout out of heads and skin.
Hell, lemon trees sprout anywhere you plant their seeds. Be mindful of where you spew yours.
Clara is a senior at Marquette Senior High School. Fortunately, she is able to read. This is obvious based on what she writes -- book reviews. She enjoys the clean breeze of spring and the smell of rain after it settles in the nooks and crannies of the soil. She thinks that people who have appendages amputated should be able to keep their lost bones. A sort of commemorative thing. Like when you shove a penny in one of those machines you find on vacation, and it comes out oval-shaped and branded, but you still want it.