Upon arriving in France, Kate is informed that on her deathbed, Anna revealed the existence of her twin brother, Hans, who is now the legal owner of the factory despite not having been seen in years. The Voralberg Toy Factory, which has made intricate clockwork toys for the better part of the twentieth century, is to be acquired by a major American toy company following the death of its elderly owner, Anna Voralberg. This can be overbearing at times - an on-the-nose college essay prompt comes to mind - but the overall effect is strong and thoroughly enjoyable.Kate Walker, a New York lawyer, is sent to France on behalf of a client. Like Shaker Heights, “Little Fires Everywhere” is meticulously planned, every storyline and detail placed with obvious purpose. Richardon’s tenant, then becomes her housekeeper, then a mentor and secret keeper for her children Pearl falls into a love triangle with the two Richardson boys. The plot is tightly structured, full of echoes and convergence, the characters bound together by a growing number of thick, overlapping threads. Disastrously, all of these people are Richardsons. For the first time, Pearl lets herself get close to new people. After years of moving from one town to another, she’s finally promised Pearl they can put down roots. Richardson seems to see Mia as the immovable object to her unstoppable force, Mia is just trying to live her life in peace, raising her daughter and creating her (brilliant but commercially unmotivated) art. (Asked where Mia grew up, Pearl replies, “I’m not really sure. Even Pearl doesn’t know much about her mother’s past. Richardson has developed her investigative skills writing for the local paper, and Mia has plenty of secrets. The story begins at the end, with a spot of arson. Why should Mia get to, when no one else did?” Already suspicious of her enigmatic tenant, she goes on an increasingly vindictive, obsessive mission to uncover any secrets in Mia’s past. You can’t just do what you want, she thought. Richardson thought, and what would result? Heartbreak for her oldest friend. Richardson discovers Mia was the one who set these events in motion, she nearly loses her mind. Lines are drawn over a heated custody battle between Mia’s co-worker- a young Chinese waitress who abandoned her baby in a moment of desperation - and the Richardsons’ close friends, a wealthy white couple in the final stages of that baby’s adoption. Richardson decides that Mia is her nemesis, the two women’s lives have become messily entwined. Richardson is immediately fascinated and unsettled by “this Mia, a completely different kind of woman leading a completely different life, who seemed to make her own rules with no apologies.” Before long, their children befriend each other, and they befriend each other’s children. The challenge comes in the shape of Mia Warren, a visual artist and single mother who rents a house from the Richardsons with her teenage daughter Pearl. “Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.” The book has some serious themes, but the tone is refreshingly animated, less dependent on ennui and adultery than many of the books that have defined suburban American fiction. In “Little Fires Everywhere,” the stellar follow-up to her bestselling 2014 debut, “Everything I Never Told You,” she takes her hometown and throws it into chaos, with glee and evident affection. Mary Mead or Cabot Cove, Shaker Heights is a real place - author Celeste Ng grew up there. Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a comfortable, peaceful, progressive suburb of Cleveland, a carefully planned community incorporated in 1912 that exists in a gentle state of idyll, sustained by adherence to the “rules, many rules, about what you could and could not do.” It’s a marvelous setting for a novel, reminiscent of the sleepy fictional villages that are forever being ravaged by murder.īut unlike St.
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