"Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng

It's no surprise that Ng's novel is currently a popular miniseries. It's filled with family drama, mystery and intrigue, and teenage and adult angst.

The novel is about the tension between two families with opposing views on the world. First there's the Richardsons: Mom, Dad, and high school children Lexie, Trip, Moody, and Izzy. They live in wealthy suburban Shaker Heights and are committed to living the traditional American Dream. Then there's Mia and Pearl, who move into a rental house the Richardsons own. Mia is an artist, traveling as inspiration strikes her with her high school daughter Pearl. As the children form friendships with each other, the mothers' opposing viewpoints are brought into conflict.

Mia is the hero of the book: wise, comforting to all, unflappable, unrelenting in pursuit of her craft. Her big secret--that she agreed to act as a surrogate for another couple but instead ran off with her unborn child--is a sign of her love and devotion. At the end she leaves intensely personal, perfectly tailored, on-the-nose art pieces for each member of the Richardson family. Which, c'mon, is just creepy. If she hadn't been run off by Mrs. Richardson, what would she have done with them? While Mia has many admirable traits, I wish she had been more nuanced. Is it that admirable to pursue your audience-less and payment-less art at all costs, even the life of your daughter?

If Mia's the hero, then the suburban characters--no, the suburban moms, of course--are the villains. I'm fully ready to acknowledge there is plenty wrong with suburbanites, but a broadly characterizing them as self-entitled, narrow-minded, and insular feels dully stereotypical at this point, especially when such criticism is always targeted at the moms. Even the names suggest such disdain. Mia, though an adult mother, is just Mia. But Mrs. Richardson and Mrs. McCullough are always their surnames, just another reflection of their lack of identity and coolness. Mrs. Richardson is portrayed as completely unsympathetic, and even though Mrs. McCullough ought to be more sympathetic given her enormous number of miscarriages and the loss of a child she has cared for as her own for a year, she too comes off undeserving because of her money.

Ultimately the book is deeply--and troublingly--romantic. It favors the passionate free spirits and vilifies the orderly suburbanites, all while ignoring reality. It suggests any pursuit of money or suggestion that money correlates to happiness is wrong but says nothing about the horror of poverty. At the end (massive spoilers), Bebe kidnaps her child from the McCulloughs and returns with the child to China. We're led to see it as an act of heroism, a rightful return, but Bebe is also destitute. A mother-daughter bond is powerful but does not provide food. I don't mean that to say that the baby should have stayed with the McCulloughs, but rather to suggest that Bebe and May Ling's ending is not a "happily ever after" as the novel implies. Similarly, 15-year-old Izzy runs away at the end after setting fire to her family home, with the implication that she will miraculously someday join Mia and Pearl and they'll all be happy, free spirits together. Again, this is a horrific misrepresentation of the life of a homeless runaway teen.

In the end the book paints with a very large brush in depicting its teenage and adult characters. Its targets feel easy. It's an engaging mystery with little depth or meaning.

Note: Looking up the cover for the book, I saw that the new Hulu miniseries specifically casts Mia and her daughter Pearl as black, a change from the book where their ethnicity is never referenced. I think this contrasts could add a layer that's missing from the book and also perhaps complicate Mia and Mrs. Richardson's relationship more than the novel does.

"The City We Became" by N.K. Jemisin

At this point, I've read--and adored--quite a few of Jemisin's novels. The City We Became stands out from her other entries by being the first to take place in our world, rather than a fantasy environment. Sure, there's still magic and bizarre creatures and people with powers, but it takes place in New York City! Our New York City!

It's easy to understand such a shift. After all, if there's an American city that's been endlessly mythologized, it's NYC. Heck, there's a whole genre of "love letter to New York" movies, TV shows, and books. Whether you're a born-and-raised city dweller or a farmer in Montana, NYC means something to you. Jemisin plays with that mythology and meaning by taking it literally: in The City We Became, NYC and its boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island) are embodied by human avatars who are endowed with powers drawn from their boroughs' characteristics.

However, by setting her novel in the real New York, Jemisin creates a relationship with the reader that is different from her other works. In the Broken Earth trilogy, for example, readers are on equal footing in their confusion over orogenes' powers, but The City We Became relies on readers' knowledge of--and adoration for--New York to work.

This is where I hit my first stumbling block. There are people for whom New York is everything: the apex of America, the place where it happens. And plenty of those people aren't New Yorkers (and perhaps have never even been to New York). Then there are those for whom cities have little appeal. Though I've been to New York a handful of times and I get that it's a big city and has a lot of cool stuff... meh? Don't get me wrong, the suburb in which I live is dull and lifeless, but I still don't feel the pull of the city. Or know much about it (I'll admit those could be related).

I think that buy-in is key to really loving The City We Became, which relies on the insane and joyful jumble and mismatch of people and ideas that is New York to craft its characters and conflicts. For those of us who don't love it, the New York adulation can become a bit eye-rolling.

In depicting the real New York, Jemisin also gets to play with another real issue: racism (also sexism, homophobia, and ageism, though racism is the more dominant theme). Her books always feature characters of color and address issues of discrimination, but here she gets to address American racism explicitly. There's some good and bad there. On the one hand, some of the discussions have a feel of "Racism 101," lacking much nuance or depth. Because the Big Bad uses white racists to attack, the racism can feel heavy-handed and obvious (Aislyn's father feels especially caricatured), which can obscure the less obvious--but more pervasive--racism today. Still, it's rare to see racism discussed in fantasy settings, so Jemisin's focus feels relevant and warranted.

I also thought the characterization if Aislyn (Staten Island) was especially good. She's a racist xenophobe, but you can understand why she's that way and how her experiences have confirmed her prejudice--and just how challenging it is to undo. The Woman in White (the Big Bad) is especially good at manipulating that prejudice. The focus on "niceness"--Aislyn assumes that because the Woman in White is "nice" and looks like her, she can't be bad--was an especially effective point.

Ultimately, though, The City We Became is a fantasy action novel. And here's the thing. I was annoyed by the book. Rolled my eyes at all the mentions of just how awesome New York is. Thought the characters were cheesy, over played. Yet I kept returning to it whenever I had a minute. Flew through its 500 pages. And even though I knew it would end with a hand-holding mantra of "We are New York!", I still welled up.

Miscellaneous:

• I realized just how rarely we see older heroes in fantasy settings. Though we're frequently reminded that Bronca (the Bronx) is in her 60's (maybe even 70's), I wanted to miscast her as a younger woman. Even Brooklyn is older (50's?) than your typical heroes.
• The boroughs rely on "constructs"--essential New York things--to get their powers (e.g. the first time Manhattan gets his power it's through a credit card). In the final fight, Manhattan turns into King Kong. I was so tickled.
• There's a lot going on with multiple universes/layers of existence, all of which speaks to the Woman in White's motivation. It works to add layers (the Woman in White isn't inherently evil), but it's also confusing and perhaps works against some of the metaphors and symbolism Jemisin's crafted to challenge racism.
• Addendum: There's some interesting stuff suggesting that gentrification (worldwide) is a result of the Woman in White's attempts to weaken and infiltrate the cities to be born. Need to think more on it
• Manhattan's roommate-to-be, Bel, plays an important role in the early chapters and is then completely forgotten. I wonder if he'll return in a more significant way.