GDT Book Club: Little Fires Everywhere

[Mashy]

Boy howdy, I’m not going to make any sense trying to discuss this. Suffice it to say my thoughts and emotions were all over the place. I felt for Bebe but I was torn about pulling her child from the only home and parents she’d known. And the thought that Bebe would no doubt struggle to eek out an existence for the two of them without a decent support system. I felt for the McCulloughs although I admit I had this negative bias going on in my head because they were so privileged and clueless and frankly, because Mrs McCullough was friends with Elena.

What a mess!

[ashtangi]

Indeed, Mashy! It would have been "easier" if one situation was more detrimental than the other. At least the baby would have been loved in whatever situation she was in, but still, what a mess. I can't imagine how awful that must have been for Bebe and the McCulloughs. I was kind of hoping that they would work something out where Bebe could have some sort of visitation rights, but I understand why the McCulloughs would not want to do that.

[moosishun]

I wonder if Celeste is an artist herself. She sure writes beautifully and those photographs and the techniques involved are described in such detail that I can almost "see" them.

[bumblebuzz21]

The whole adoption story is what hit a little too close to home for me. I didn't want to do a domestic adoption b/c I was too worried about having the birth family change their mind and I didn't want to have to sell myself to birth parents. Obviously, I am a tad dramatic!

Then we get to the adoption and I was annoyed that people were annoyed that the child was going to another culture. We had started the adoption process from China before we realized that adoption wasn't going to work for us. Like I said, this story was too much my reality for me to be able to like it.

[gemster]

I’m torn on the adoption situation, like most of us I could see both sides and it was a no win situation. I do wonder what sort of a life the little girl will have growing up in China but admittedly I know little about China and not sure if it’s still a very repressed society, I think it would have been in the 1990s though?

I might have missed this due to how fast I read the book, but did Bebe have family in China still who would take her in and help her?

And another thing that I might have missed, how did she manage to get the baby out of the US with no papers or passport?

[MonkeyTwirl]

The adoption story was too heart-rending and impossible for me to give much thought to. I thought the author did a good job showing both sides - the impossibility of a fair resolution.

[thenewmg]

Can I join in even though I'm not part of the book club officially? I read it this month with y'all at the suggestion of someone in another thread.

I'm in the 'did not like it' camp.

The characters all reminded me of people I grew up with, so I hated all of them as people which made the book not very endearing from the start. I also hated how predictable some of it felt to me.

That being said, I read it all, but I wasn't excited to read it at night when I climbed into bed.

[honeybzzzs]

bumblebuzz21. Not dramatic at all. My friend adopted from Korea for the main reason of “the birth parents are less likely to come over here and want their baby back”

She adopted just a year or so after the whole Baby Jessica story was in the news. That baby was 2 1/2 years old when she was returned to her birth parents.
My friend had a valid reason to be concerned.
So, I think you were very reasonable to be concerned too.

[bumblebuzz21]

When do we get to talk about the fact that Mia has apparently never had sex?!

[peacemama]

I loved Ed Lim, Bebe's pro bono lawyer.

[ashtangi]

DAY FOUR:

Did you have a favorite character?

Despite her many flaws, I loved Mia, and Pearl too, to a lesser extent. I think she's more open to listening to her daughter and making things better with her and her parents.

[moosishun]

I loved awkward Moody. He was able to see the true beauty in a person . I think out of all of those kids, he will be the BEST ONE. I'd fall for him, but probably not until he was a little older.

[moosishun]

Hey, though, I have to say that one of the most unbelievable parts of that book (besides Bebe snatching that baby away - what house in that neighborhood wouldn't have an alarm system or at least be locked?) was Elena hiring Mia. Now honestly.

But it sure built into those beautiful gifts she presented to that family.

And one of my more non-favorites was Mr. Richardson. HE WAS NEVER AROUND.

[Nicole]

I am not an "official" member but I did listen to this book on Audible and I hate to say it but I was underwhelmed, maybe with all the hype I read it was just a bit of a let down. I didn't "really" like any of the people in the book, all of them had something that just turned me off. I was so angry when everyone just let Pearl "take the fall" for Lexie's abortion, I get it because her mom was a bitch but come on, as far as I could tell she had never been held responsible for anything in her life and this just added to that.

The whole turkey baster situation was a bit unbelievable to me, I don't know why but...eww.

<backing back out of the thread>

[ccToast]

Hello Bookclubbers! When we moved the discussion for this book I didn't realize that this week conflicted with my very rare travel for work. But now I'm back and enjoying this discussion. I hope you don't mind if I put my thoughts about the earlier topics here.

I loved this book and had trouble putting it down once I got started. I thought the main characters were well formed and their strengths and weaknesses played off of each other well, even when I disagreed with choices they made or actions they took. Like MonkeyTwirl I enjoyed this story and the interactions among the family members and other characters because I felt that this story was ABOUT something(s) more than I enjoyed the family story in A Spool of Blue Thread.

In comparing Mia and Elena, I see Mia as a warm person whom I would like to get to know because I think I could learn from her and her view of the world (which she shares through her art). As previous posters have said, I would like to be able to see her art. While I think that Elena acts as she does because she sees truth as absolute; her beliefs and moral standard is so black and white that she cannot account another person's perspective and reality.

Pearl is my favorite character. She is growing up with the stability of the love in their small family, the lack of stability in all other areas, and I really feel for her. I would love to see her in a future installment of the story. (Can you make that happen moosishun?)

[bumblebuzz21]

I also like the art teacher and her wife. They seemed cool.

[balancedlife]

As I have already mentioned, this book is not really to my taste. But I loved all the passages which talked about Mia creating her art. I love all kinds of art and artists. Their special ways of seeing the world are just fascinating to me!

Books and art -- I love them so much! Well, and dogs. I love dogs!

[gemster]

I am going to sound like a complete philistine here but I’m wondering if I didn’t take to Mia much as I’m not really that interested in art and skimmed over those bits of the book (In my defence I was reading in a mad rush to get finished in time!) I love books and history but the art appreciation gene seems to have passed me by completely.

Others are saying they liked Mia because she was an artist and because of what she created, whereas I just saw her as a bit of a crap mum who didn’t seem very emotionally engaged with her daughter and seemed to put her second to her art.

I didn’t have a favourite character, same as Nicole I wouldn’t say I ‘really’ liked any of them but I think Pearl, Moody and Izzy probably were the most likeable but Moody in particular seemed a bit one dimensional. I think that was my problem with the whole book, although it was beautifully written I didn’t feel like any of the characters were really fleshed out enough to get to know them.

[Mashy]

Thanks for your thoughts on Mia, Gemster. I felt pretty much the same as you but couldn’t find the words to express it.

Do you think that a book with a fairly big cast of characters like this one tends to lead to less fleshing out of each of the characters? I didn’t think they were one-dimensional when I read the book, but in hindsight, they do seem rather single-purposed.

[oxocube]

My favorite thing about this book (and forgive me if I'm jumping ahead) is that I love that the READER knew things that the characters didn't ever know--the abortion in particular. I wanted to scream SAY SOMETHING and she never did. Often we know things before the characters do but it's unusual that we know something they *never* know.

[gemster]

Mashy I think my overall feeling was the book was actually a bit like a painting or a photo, in that it gave you the ‘picture’ of the story and it was a beautifully crafted picture too but you could only really guess at the thoughts and motivation and what lay behind the ‘front’ of the people in the picture. It read to me like an observation of them and their lives by an outsider rather than from the point of view of the characters themselves.

I think oddly enough the only one who seemed to be a bit more rounded out was the least likeable - Elena. There seemed to be more about her past, her inner thought processes and why she behaved as she did than there was about anyone else.

oxocube that links in to what you said in your post too, like the author and the readers are very much outside observers looking at the big picture. I know that’s true for a lot of books but it struck me particularly with this one. 

[cindy6116]

To gemster's point, I think it would be difficult to enjoy this book if you were trying to read it quickly. The things I liked, as others have said, were the descriptions and, for me at least, I need to kind of take a little time to savor the words and the images they provoke in order to get the most enjoyment from that.

One of the motivations I really felt was glossed over and left me wanting was Mia's motivation for backing out of her deal. She went home and received the (expected) disapproval from her parents, but it never really talked about WHY she backed out of the deal. There was no description of her coming to a realization that she couldn't give up a child, that she'd developed feelings for the baby that she hadn't realized she would have, that she felt some kind of way about her parents' reaction, or whatever.

[catservant]

Jan 25, 2018 14:29:55 GMT -5 gemster said:

I think oddly enough the only one who seemed to be a bit more rounded out was the least likeable - Elena. There seemed to be more about her past, her inner thought processes and why she behaved as she did than there was about anyone else.

This is part of why I (sort of) defended her earlier. You get more information about her motivations than any other character's. Her actions made sense because you knew her background.

I don't really have a favorite character. This is definitely a "donate" book now that I have finished. If I had to choose it would be between Elena and Pearl, because those are the characters with the more detailed inner life descriptions.

[MonkeyTwirl]

My favorite character was Pearl, because I felt her most. I felt her wishes, desires, longings, fascinations, motivations. It's not that I am like her, or that I think she is the most wonderful person, it's that the author let me see through her eyes more than any other character.

[moosishun]

oxocube, I was thinking at the end of that book "Man, I wish I had a book written about me so I would know who I really was." I found the inner doings of all those people riveting. They did not even know themselves but I knew them! It makes me wonder "how much do any of us really know about anybody?" We see what they do but the motivation behind that or who they really are when they do the things they do are LOST on us, and are very possibly lost on them.

I just adored this book.