Article contributed by Marta Paraschiv
I’ve been a huge fan of Celeste Ng’s writing ever since I’ve read her debut novel Everything I Never Told You. Naturally, I was very excited to read her second book and then watch its adaptation that came out earlier this year. Even though my expectations were quite high, I wasn’t disappointed at all as both of them being very mysterious and provocative.
Both the book and the adaptation start with a shocking fire in the perfectly quiet and peaceful Shaker Heights. It’s even more of a shocking event since the house on fire belongs to the Richardsons, a reputable family and one that is known for following the strict rules of the community they belong to. I believe Shaker Heights represented by this obsessive need to follow the rules and organise everything down to the littlest detail is so prominent and omnipresent that it becomes a character in itself. A character that I was quite fascinated with because Shaker Heights is a utopia, at least in theory, and everything is always perfectly planned and there is a well-established order to everything, everybody knows what they should do at all times, and nothing is ever left to chance. Their community is formed mainly of families that have lived there for generations upon generations, they are used to this lifestyle and they seem to thrive in it. That’s before Mia Warren moves to Shaker Heights and dismantles this utopia by challenging their principles and showing the readers and the viewers the ugliest sides of the locals.
Mia and her daughter, Pearl have never stayed in one place for long, mainly because of Mia’s profession. She is a photographer who is always chasing inspiration, moving to another town as soon as she completes a project. Because of this, she’s somewhat of an oddity in Shaker Heights. How she seems to love not being rooted in one place and rather preferring the freedom to travel and create art all over the country puzzles her landlord, Elena Richardson. Elena is her complete opposite, thoroughly following her plans of getting married immediately after graduating, then moving back to her hometown, getting a job as a journalist at the local paper, and afterwards, starting a family. Their connection becomes even more complicated when they find themselves on different ‘sides’ of a custody battle. Elena senses that Mia has more secrets than she lets on and begins to dig deeper in order to find out what the other woman has to hide. The adaptation was true to these main plotlines, to the structure (the book starts with the ending and then goes back to the beginning in order to see how the Richardsons’ house ended up on fire) and the casting and the acting were both very well done.
Now onto the differences, I believe the series did a greater job at articulating the discussion on race – from microaggressions to colour blindness. Pearl and Mia aren’t Black in the book and so, the discourse focuses more on class (with a focus on the many extra opportunities the Richardsons have because they are rich). Race is also discussed in the book as the custody battle between May Ling’s Chinese biological mother and her white adoptive parents progresses, yet it’s not as nuanced as in the adaptation. There were so many powerful and mention worthy scenes in the mini-series between Mia and Elena where Mia would point out Elena’s privilege, but this one is probably my favourite and it shows perfectly what a great job the mini-series does at discussing privilege, race, and class:
“Because in my opinion, a good mother puts her daughter’s needs before her own. A good mother makes good choices and she doesn’t drag a child from town to town, school to school. She doesn’t smoke marijuana and leave her child to fend for herself, and she really doesn’t leave a baby alone in the cold in front of a fire station.”
“You didn’t make good choices, you had good choices. Options that being rich and white and entitled gave you.”
The adaptation also did a great job with how they represented sexuality – it was way bolder than in the book and from a feminist perspective as well. I loved what they did with Izzy’s and Mia’s storylines as Izzy is gay (her sexuality never being disclosed in the book) and Mia is bisexual and very sex positive. There are some great additions with Mia having some refreshing conversations about sex with Pearl and Elena’s book club opening up a much-needed conversation about women, sexuality and shame and giving us a great feminist book recommendation.
Motherhood, in its many forms, is a central subject in the story crafted by Celeste Ng. The book and the adaptation ask so many thought-provoking questions about what it means and takes to be a mother. I loved how they offered closer looks into feelings that aren’t usually associated with motherhood because they are considered negative – for example, jealousy. However, I was a bit surprised with how the adaptation presented the relationship between Elena and Izzy, her youngest daughter. Their relationship had always been strained even in the book because Elena is very protective of Izzy, but tends to show it in very questionable ways – she wants Izzy to be more like her and her siblings, she’s too rebellious for Elena and she’s trying to transform her into this mini-her because that way, she would be easier to understand and handle. Yet, I’ve never felt like she might truly hate her daughter. In the adaptation, though, the conflicts between these two would be so tumultuous and the words would be so hurtful that it was difficult to emphasise with Elena.
On the other hand, the adaptation’s ending made me see some unity in the Richardson family that I didn’t notice in the book as there was an agreement between the children that things needed to change and an understanding in Elena that she’s paying for some of the awful things that she’s done. For once, there wasn’t only Izzy being displeased with their family, all of them were starting to feel as confined as she did and understand where she was coming from. The mini-series ended on a hopeful note with Pearl meeting her grandparents at last and the Richardson children breaking free from the cage Elena had imposed on them with her obsession for perfection.
