Little Fires Everywhere: Are Rules Different for Literary Novels?

Let me preface this blog post by saying that my main diet of reading genres consists of page-turning thrillers, dark suspense, police procedurals, and clever mysteries. I rarely read literary novels and am choosy about which ones I pick—books I’ve loved like The Kite Runner and Love in the Time of Cholera, and books I didn’t love that others did, like The Help. I have dozens of books on my home bookshelves and in my Kindle, but the stay at home order has limited my library visits. I decided to expand my reading into books that have reached bestseller status that I can download from my library’s Overdrive/Libby app. That’s how I chose Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng. Most of the reviews were stellar. The book starts with the semi-ending, a device I dislike. Many people hate prologues. I don’t mind them. This wasn’t a prologue; it was part of the ending, and it took away some of the edge. The book is a story of privilege, of mothers’ love, and of class.

I started writing late in life. I learned from writing classes and from people who knew writing and who eased me into what I needed to know and showed me where I was wrong. I’m still learning. That’s the same way I learned my art when I went to art school. Call it the rules, if you will. I call it learning the basics. Once you know them, you can veer off and “create” something that might not follow the rulebook. If you study Picasso, you will see that his early work is traditional. He learned the rules, then created his specific style that others copied. I try to follow the writing rules when I write, and I notice when they’re so flagrantly ignored in others’ works.

Ms. Ng’s writing is lovely and beautiful. That is a fact. In some scenes, you’re blinded to the fact that the author is writing pages and pages of descriptive, flowery details of the character’s photograph compositions. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to be able to write beautiful, poetic passages, but then I’d probably have a gruesome murder that would erase all the beauty. We write what we write, but let's not forget that beautiful writing does not solely make a great book.

What really annoyed me were the POV switches. We’re in one head with a long internal, then there’s a thought from the other person in the scene. Throughout the book. (I just broke a rule with a fragment.) One friend who read the book didn’t notice. I noticed, constantly. Head-hopping is okay if it’s well done, another writer friend said. Still another writer friend said it best, and I quote, “I'm sick of hearing how 'literary' authors don't have to follow the rules we mere mortals do.” There’s the old saying that rules are meant to be broken. Maybe, but when it’s distracting, doesn’t it defeat the purpose?

I almost quit reading after the first fifty pages. Why did I continue? I wanted to know what happened. Chalk that up to the underlying mystery and the author’s clever way of pulling the reader along. I also wanted to know how these two disparate women evolve throughout the book. One didn’t, the other did though too late for any meaningful changes in their lives. Both were self-absorbed and shallow.

Some claim this is more of a young adult book. It is and it isn’t. The teens in the book are an important part and the driving force, but the two mothers ultimately control the story. Reese Witherspoon thought it was such a great book, her production company made a series for Hulu, though I’ve read they changed the ending. I have no desire to see it.

There are side plots: an adoption trial pitting a Chinese woman and her baby against a privileged couple who lovingly raised her for a year. It’s complicated and one of the more interesting aspects of the book though the outcome is contrived and manipulated and unforgivable. There are teens in love, a friendship betrayal, and a mother’s love so strong and deep that she doesn’t realize what she’s doing to the most important person in her life: the teen daughter who unbelievably goes along with being uprooted over forty times in her life. There’s so much more that strains credulity, but I won’t elaborate. I also won’t make a judgment on what I thought of the ending, nor will I judge the characters and their choices. Those are for the reader to decide.

The theme of this blog is about the writing, at once lyrical and even magical, and sometimes overwritten, along with the first person, POV switch, and narrator storytelling, all sometimes on one page and a couple of times in one paragraph. I will never reach the bestseller status of Ms. Ng, but I’ll plod along, keeping to the rules the best way I can, maybe veering a little, and hoping my characters are believable. Murder is seldom magical.

Polly Iyer is the author of nine novels: standalones Hooked, InSight, Murder Déjà Vu, Threads, and Indiscretion, and four books in the Diana Racine Psychic Suspense series, Mind Games, Goddess of the Moon, Backlash and The Scent of Murder. A Massachusetts native, she makes her home in the beautiful Piedmont region of South Carolina. You can visit her website for more on Polly and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.