A study by Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley concluded that, “The close relation between navigating social- and story-worlds has a number of implications, not the least interesting of which is the proposal that readers of predominantly narrative fiction may actually improve or maintain their social-inference abilities through reading.” This study concludes that reading literature helped the test subjects in their everyday lives, suggesting that reading literature makes us better people. A good example of this is seen in Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, which is a novel of a family trying to understand the sudden death of Lydia a sixteen-year-old, without friends or close family relations. Ng does a great job using emotions to enlighten readers to family issues,
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The plot of Everything I Never Told You immediately draw the reader when Ng writes the first sentence, “Lydia is dead” (1). The setting of this book is in 1977, Ohio, but contains chapter flashbacks to different dates and locations that further explains the character’s conflicts. Conflicts are immensely important in novels, and the major conflict in this novel is the death of Lydia. While everyone in the family tries to process her death in their own way, they come to an understanding themselves. Although Ng begins the novel with what seems to be the climax, it only grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to know want happened. The true climax of the novel of Marilyn’s character is when she discovers her mother cookbook that Lydia buried under books. Ng writes, “It had not been science that Lydia had loved” (247). At this moment, Marilyn finally realizes that everything her daughter did was not because she wanted to, but because she loved her mother and wanted to see her pleased. Marilyn had spent all her time and effort molding Lydia into what she wanted to be, without seeing what make Lydia
The plot of Everything I Never Told You immediately draw the reader when Ng writes the first sentence, “Lydia is dead” (1). The setting of this book is in 1977, Ohio, but contains chapter flashbacks to different dates and locations that further explains the character’s conflicts. Conflicts are immensely important in novels, and the major conflict in this novel is the death of Lydia. While everyone in the family tries to process her death in their own way, they come to an understanding themselves. Although Ng begins the novel with what seems to be the climax, it only grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to know want happened. The true climax of the novel of Marilyn’s character is when she discovers her mother cookbook that Lydia buried under books. Ng writes, “It had not been science that Lydia had loved” (247). At this moment, Marilyn finally realizes that everything her daughter did was not because she wanted to, but because she loved her mother and wanted to see her pleased. Marilyn had spent all her time and effort molding Lydia into what she wanted to be, without seeing what make Lydia