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Virtual Santa Clarita Book Club
Saturday, August 13, 2022, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
Category: Clubs

LACPA’s Summer Book Club Selection:

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more...

Book Summary

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is the story of two families that collide and enmesh. One family is on the run, broke, and never get comfortable anywhere for very long.  The other family lives a life of privilege, security, and routine. Both families have deeply held beliefs that are challenged and secrets are revealed when a third family attempts to adopt a Chinese-American baby.   

LACPA member Dr. Lauren Wecker recommended Little Fires Everywhere because it incorporates interesting characters and relationships that are well developed and keep readers intrigued and turning pages. It includes the themes of motherhood, mother-daughter relationships, and the cost of keepings secrets.  

And it’s streaming…

In March 2020 Hulu released an eight-episode miniseries of Little Fires Everywhere, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington as the two mothers.  Interestingly, the racial difference of the two lead actors added an element into the story that isn’t part of the novel.  I expect that our Book Club discussions will include comparisons between the novel and the television series.

A Sample of Amazon Reviews

Stellar . . . The plot is tightly structured, full of echoes and convergence, the characters bound together by a growing number of thick, overlapping threads . . . . Ng is a confident, talented writer, and it’s a pleasure to inhabit the lives of her characters and experience the rhythms of Shaker Heights through her clean, observant prose. Before she became an author she was a miniaturist—almost too perfect for a writer of suburban fiction—and there’s a lovely, balanced, dioramic quality to this novel. She toggles between multiple points of view, creating a narrative both broad in scope and fine in detail, all while keeping the story moving at a thriller’s pace.” —LA Times


“Delectable and engrossing . . . A complex and compulsively readable suburban saga that is deeply invested in mothers and daughters . . . What Ng has written, in this thoroughly entertaining novel, is a pointed and persuasive social critique, teasing out the myriad forms of privilege and predation that stand between so many people and their achievement of the American dream. But there is a heartening optimism, too. This is a book that believes in the transformative powers of art and genuine kindness—and in the promise of new growth, even after devastation, even after everything has turned to ash.” —Boston Globe

“Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning.


Please contact the Book Club facilitator to RSVP so a Zoom Invitation can be sent to you.

(As of 7/25, this event was changed from hybrid to virtual due to rising Covid cases.)

Hosted by Dr. Lynne Steinman on Zoom 
(661) 259-0144

Contact: Dr. Lynne Steinman [email protected] 661-259-0144