Story Skeleton—Everything I Never Told You

Story structure relates to the psychological appeal of narrative, that which engages readers and builds in them a sense of anticipation—a desire to know what happens next. Our ongoing exploration now delves into mysteries, illustrating yet again the universality of story structure, albeit from a different angle.

 

By Michelle Barker

Who or Why Done it?

At the heart of every mystery novel there is a puzzle to solve that can often be formulated as a question. In Celeste Ng’s masterful literary mystery, Everything I Never Told You (2014), the question shifts. It starts with: What happened to sixteen-year-old Lydia Lee? And then when her body is discovered: How did she die? Was she murdered? Was this a suicide? Or was it an accident? 

But only the reader gets the answer to the most important question: why did she die? Ng uses omniscient narration to show us what each character knows but hasn’t told anyone else, thereby creating brilliant dramatic irony in the service of a greater theme: we keep secrets. We don’t communicate the way we might. And the results can be tragic.

Narrative Goals

The book opens with these lines: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” 

Talk about a hook. But it’s more than that: this entire book is about the things we don’t know and the assumptions we make about what other people want. It’s also chiefly a story about parental expectations and the pressure children feel to live up to them. It exemplifies Carl Jung’s famous quote: “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.” Ng explores the need to belong, the pressure to fit in—and how this gets complicated by racism. 

The novel is set in Ohio in the 1970s but it jumps between two timelines: the present moment of Lydia going missing, along with the investigation of her death; and the past—not just Lydia’s, but also that of her parents, who met at a time when mixed-race marriages were illegal in many states in America. In fact, there are two missing person stories here, because Lydia’s mother Marilyn also disappears earlier in the timeline. And the story of Marilyn going missing is key, because it forms Lydia’s catalyst. To put it plainly: we get the story of Lydia’s parents because who they are forms who she is; what they do causes who she becomes. 

Ng uses Lydia’s death as the narrative framework for the story. In the present-moment timeline it is the jumping-off point; everything in the past timeline leads up to it. The dramas of each member of the Lee family unfold around Lydia, but the chief antagonists are Lydia’s parents.

James Lee (Lydia’s father)

• Wants: To be accepted into white American society. Having experienced racism as a Chinese American, he believes assimilation is the key to belonging—not just for himself but also for his children.
• Misbelief: That his failure to assimilate is due to something he can control, rather than being a societal problem; that if he tries hard enough, he will be accepted. Also, that Marilyn, a white woman, doesn’t understand what he’s going through—which is why he has an affair with Louisa, a Chinese woman.
• Needs: To understand that he is not to blame for the racism he experiences, and that Marilyn faced similar struggles as a woman in a man’s field (sciences).

Marilyn Lee (Lydia’s mother)

• Wants: To become a doctor and break free from the societal expectations of women in her era (especially her mother’s expectations). When she can't achieve this, she redirects her ambition onto Lydia, trying to live vicariously through her.
• Misbelief: That Lydia’s success will validate her own sacrifices.
• Needs: To pursue her own goals directly and parent her children properly.

Nath Lee (Lydia’s older brother)

• Wants: To escape from the family dynamics and pursue his passion for space and science at Harvard. He yearns for freedom from the family. The suffocating expectations placed on Lydia mean he is largely ignored.
• Misbelief: That he must protect Lydia, even at the cost of his own happiness.
• Needs: To let go of his guilt and obligation toward Lydia and allow himself the freedom to pursue his dreams.

Lydia Lee

• Wants: To please her parents and fulfill their conflicting expectations—James’ desire for her to blend in and Marilyn’s ambition for her to stand out as an academic success.
• Misbelief: That meeting her parents’ expectations will earn her their love and approval, even if it comes at the cost of her identity and happiness. That she was the cause of her mother leaving. That Nath will always be there to save her.
• Needs: To be seen and accepted for who she is, and to rescue herself. Tragically, she realizes this too late—and she chooses the wrong way of proving she can rescue herself.

Hannah Lee (Lydia’s younger sister)

• Wants: To be noticed and valued by her family. As the youngest and most overlooked child, she craves attention and acknowledgment.
• Misbelief: That she is inherently unimportant. She was the one who derailed Marilyn’s aspirations. She doesn’t know this directly, but she surely senses it.
• Needs: Same as the wants: to be seen as a person with her own voice and worth. 

 

Lydia becomes the focal point for both parents’ unfulfilled desires. As the only child of the three who has blue eyes, she seems (in James’ perception) to have the best chance of fitting into American society. Marilyn focuses on her partly because she is the first girl, but also because Lydia bends to her will. Lydia is the girl who will accomplish what Marilyn cannot. 

Which leads us to the basic statement of structure: When Lydia’s mother mysteriously disappears, Lydia blames herself and vows that if her mother ever returns, she will be obedient to a fault. But her parents place opposing expectations on her that are impossible to realize. When these expectations come at the expense of her identity, she must reclaim herself and become her own person. Redemption comes too late for Lydia but her death allows the rest of the family to realize where they’ve gone wrong. 

The two timelines unfold in tandem:

·         Lydia’s (past) timeline builds toward her realization that she cannot meet her parents’ expectations, which results in her death.

·         The mystery (present) timeline starts with Lydia’s death and builds toward revelations about her state of mind, leading to the family accepting their responsibility in her death.

Plot Points

The novel opens with Lydia’s death, which is the tragic climax of her own story and a major turning point in the arcs of the other characters. To find the inciting incidents for each arc, we must move back in time. 

Lydia’s Story Arc

Lydia has a typical little-kid life at age five, when you believe that the way things are is the way they will go on being forever. This is the early 60s: Dad goes to work; Mom’s in the kitchen. Stasis means stability. Lydia is too young to want anything more than this. 

And then a catalyst comes along to shake her world. Her mother disappears without warning or explanation, and—as children do—she blames herself. She finds her mother’s (seemingly) beloved cookbook, which symbolizes everything about her—and everything Lydia wants from her mother—and she makes a vow that forms her baseline motivation: if and when her mother ever returns, she will be a perfect child and will do everything she says, without question. The new motivation harkens back to the stability she had in stasis that she has suddenly lost and that will form the bedrock of her narrative goal. 

While their mother is still missing, Nath pushes her into the lake. She can’t swim. but she doesn’t fight the idea of dying. She depends on Nath to rescue her. Besides being a great moment of foreshadowing, this is also a pivotal experience in their relationship arc. Lydia makes Nath into a savior, thus abdicating her responsibility to save herself and obliging him to assume this role. 

Her mother’s return is her inciting incident. This is where her quest begins, when she can start working toward being the compliant daughter that will keep her mother from disappearing again. Lydia wants to hold her family together and she believes that by meeting both parents’ expectations of her, she will accomplish this. If she can be the perfect daughter—excelling in school for her mother and being popular for her father—then she will keep them happy and prevent the family from falling apart again. 

In her rising action, she tries to please her mother by taking the science classes Marilyn wants, but she’s struggling, and she can’t seem to please her father by fitting in and having friends either. Lydia starts faking phone conversations with friends she doesn’t have. She will do anything for family stability. 

In the midpoint reversal that follows, parental pressure chafes, and Lydia rebels. She’s failing physics, which is where she connects with the wild neighbor boy, Jack. When she starts spending more time with him, Nath assumes Jack will seduce her and then dump her, as per his reputation. In fact, he’s teaching her how to drive. Lydia starts smoking, stops studying. 

As the rising action continues, Nath’s acceptance to Harvard is the first of the dominoes to fall, leading to Lydia’s breaking point. He will leave. She will lose her rescuer. She hides his acceptance letters—but to no avail. On her sixteenth birthday, she fails her driving test. Her father gifts her with a necklace containing a locket with a photo of her at a dance—another fake moment with fake friends. She’s so angry, she takes off with Jack, ready to lose her virginity—but he confesses that he’s gay and the person he’s in love with is Nath. 

In the argument that ensues, he says things that finally provide her with clarity: she has allowed her parents to dictate her entire life and has been so afraid of losing both them and Nath that she has lost herself. She believes things went wrong when Nath pushed her in the lake and rescued her. She must rescue herself, figure out what she wants and do it. She takes the first step toward self-realization by going back to the lake, but it’s a false victory. She’s convinced that if she rows out to the middle of the lake, she can swim back. Her death (climax) is tragic and accidental.

Marilyn’s Story Arc

Marilyn’s mother, a home-ec teacher who raised her alone, wants her to meet a Harvard man. Marilyn wants to study science and become a doctor. The inciting incident for this narrative goal is implied rather than stated: by choosing a medical career she is rebelling against her mother who believes a woman’s place is in the home. 

Enter James Lee, her professor of American history. As an Asian man who has experienced lifelong racism, all he wants is to blend in. Each falls in love with their perception of the other. Marilyn, blonde and blue-eyed, is quintessentially American. James stands out. 

When she finds out she’s pregnant (point of no return and a reversal), they decide to get married. She figures she’ll finish school when the baby is older. But nothing turns out as expected. James is indeed a Harvard man, but he’s an Asian Harvard man, so Mom disapproves of the marriage and Marilyn cuts all ties with her. 

By the time Marilyn’s mother dies eight years later, Marilyn has two children and has not gone back to school. When she returns to her mother’s house to pack everything up, she perceives her mother’s homemaker life (and by extension her own) as narrow and sad, and she has an epiphany. She doesn’t want this for herself. She returns changed and in despair. She ends up driving to the hospital and seeing the one female doctor she knows: Jack’s mom, Dr. Wolff. Miracle: men listen to Dr. Wolff. She has a life. 

This is Marilyn’s second reversal: she decides to finish her degree and apply to med school, so she enrolls at the community college in a neighboring town. But she doesn’t think she can do this with a husband and kids so she just . . . leaves. Rents an apartment elsewhere, doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going. The family is devastated. 

At first, she’s in heaven—back in class, studying organic chemistry. But she misses her family. And then, two days before her midterms, she discovers she’s pregnant with child number three (Hannah). She goes home, her dream unrealized. It is at this midpoint that she experiences another reversal and her goal changes: if she can’t become a doctor, her daughter will. She starts force-feeding science to Lydia, wanting it so badly for her that she assumes Lydia loves it. This is when both she and James become the antagonists in the story. 

When Lydia dies, Marilyn doesn’t see her responsibility in it. She insists someone else must have done it. But (all is lost) the police rule Lydia’s death a suicide—and then James leaves her, saying that her mother was right all along and she should have married someone white. If Lydia had been white, this wouldn’t have happened, because she would have had friends. 

Marilyn’s tragic climax is the discovery of the missing cookbook hidden in Lydia’s room—confirmation (too late) that her attempt to force her goal onto her daughter was not just misguided but essentially led Lydia to her act of self-realization that caused her to drown. Hannah enters the room, and for once, Marilyn actually sees her. In the resolution of her storyline, there is a promise of redemption. James comes back. The marriage might be salvaged. Marilyn might learn to love her youngest daughter for who she is rather than for who Marilyn wants her to be.

James’ Story Arc

Unlike Lydia and Marilyn, who have clear external goals that drive their storylines, James’ arc unfolds primarily through his relationships. Rather than pursuing a single narrative goal, he struggles with the deeply ingrained misbelief that he can control the way people perceive him, and by extension, his family. His underlying misbelief—that assimilation will protect him from the pain of racism—shapes his interactions with his family, particularly with Lydia, who he sees as having the best chance at belonging. In this way he might redeem his personal history. This belief influences how he raises his children, distances him from Marilyn, and leads to his affair with Louisa. 

A relationship arc follows a trajectory from misapprehension to understanding. Two characters begin with a flawed perception of each other—one that is shaped by their own fears, desires, or biases. Their interactions force these assumptions to the surface, creating conflict, distance, or miscommunication. Through push and pull, the characters challenge each other, leading to a moment of recognition or shift in perspective. In a well-developed relationship arc, this understanding, whether positive or painful, alters the way the characters see one another by the end of the story. 

James has spent his entire life as an outsider. He thought marrying a white woman would solve this problem, but it doesn’t—so, like Marilyn, he imposes his needs onto his children. His desire for both Nath and Lydia to fit in leads him to push them toward social acceptance, but his efforts only deepen their isolation. 

Nath’s experience of racism in the pool coupled with his sudden interest in space create resentment in James. James sees too much of himself in his bookish, friendless son. He slaps Nath, severing their relationship, and imposes his dreams of popularity onto blue-eyed Lydia. Lydia, desperate for his approval, pretends to be social while secretly growing more isolated. James mistakes her silence for compliance rather than distress. 

His internal conflict escalates when Lydia dies, and instead of facing his grief, he seeks solace in an affair with Louisa, a woman who accepts his identity in a way he believes Marilyn never has. This affair is not a direct pursuit of a narrative goal but a reaction to his growing sense of failure—both as a father and a husband. 

James’ arc reaches its breaking point when he and Marilyn fight—though they’re finally speaking honestly to each other. He leaves, believing that their marriage is doomed. But after he drives away, he remembers that while Marilyn left years ago, she also came back, and she stayed. Marilyn’s dissatisfaction is with her career, not her marriage. He realizes that she too has experienced discrimination—as a woman—and sees her in a different light. 

When he returns home, he notices Hannah and truly sees her, a small but significant moment that signals the beginning of a shift. His arc does not end with full resolution—he remains burdened by guilt—but by returning home, he takes the first step toward emotional reconnection with his family.

Nath’s Story Arc

Like James, Nath’s arc unfolds through his relationships, chiefly with his father, Lydia, and Jack. As explained above, Nath’s relationship with his father is built on rejection, since his father sees himself in his son’s failure to connect with others. Nath’s role as Lydia’s savior is something he eventually chafes against. He sees his acceptance to Harvard an escape from this. But it’s worth exploring his turbulent relationship with Jack, as this plays an essential role in understanding his character and speaks to the themes of repression and miscommunication. 

Nath spends a lot of time and energy fixating on Jack as the cause of Lydia’s death, using him as a scapegoat for his anger and sorrow. The novel strongly implies that he has romantic feelings for Jack but doesn’t fully understand or acknowledge them. Jack is comfortable in his own skin and understands his desires, whereas Nath struggles with self-acceptance. Their dynamic highlights the novel’s theme of characters suppressing their true selves. The confrontation between Nath and Jack at the end serves as a breaking point in Nath’s arc, forcing him to take a step toward self-acceptance.

Wanting the Wrong Things

Both Marilyn and James become antagonists in Lydia’s life because their goals revolve around her. They both abdicate responsibility for making themselves happy and pursuing what they truly want and instead expect her to fulfil their desires. When Lydia’s death puts a tragic end to their attempts to impose themselves on her, their true needs rise to the surface: Marilyn must notice her other children and parent them properly; James must devote himself to his wife and family. These are not their narrative goals; they are their needs, which only become apparent at the end.

Being Seen (Or not)

Every one of these characters either wants to be seen or wants to disappear. The contrary forces of absence and presence create tension throughout the novel:

·         James disappears into an affair but is seen (and accepted) by Louisa as an Asian man.

·         Marilyn disappears for two months and when she comes back, sees only what she wants to see.

·         Nath wants to disappear into space—and then later to Harvard.

·         James wants Lydia to blend in. Marilyn wants her to stand out. Lydia literally disappears.

·         Hannah takes up no space. People don’t see her, which makes her the perfect silent witness to everything that happens. She steals in an attempt to make people see her.

·         As a member of a visible minority, you’re always different. Always the one who doesn’t belong.

·         Jack wants to be seen as a ladies’ man so that no one will guess the truth about his sexuality. He deals with a different form of being other.

The Cookbook: An Objective Correlative

A literary device first coined by T.S. Eliot, the objective correlative is a shorthand way for an author to evoke immediate emotion by investing a particular setting, object, or situation with that emotion. The Betty Crocker cookbook becomes an objective correlative for both Marilyn and Lydia. For Marilyn, the book epitomizes everything she disdains about her mother: the idea that a woman’s place is in the kitchen and that the only role she can fulfil is that of cooking for her family. The cookbook represents everything she doesn’t want. It’s the only thing she takes from her mother’s house after she dies. 

Ng executes a wonderful reversal by investing the cookbook with the opposite emotions for Lydia. As a child, she assumes it’s her mother’s favorite book, since she looks at it so often. When Marilyn goes missing, the cookbook symbolizes Lydia’s need for a mother she can depend on. All the things that were important to Marilyn’s mother and that she tried to impose on Marilyn—precisely the things Marilyn doesn’t want and doesn’t think Lydia wants. Lydia eventually hides the book—and when Marilyn finds it, she realizes it wasn’t science all these years that Lydia loved; it was her.

Head Hopping Narration

In most cases, head hopping as a narrative choice is not ideal. The constant switching without warning from one perspective to another tends to create a feeling of dislocation for the reader. However, in this novel (as in Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto) it is absolutely the right choice. The only person to have the full story, the only person with access to every character’s true thoughts and unexpressed feelings, is the reader. But we can only act as observers. We are powerless to change anything. The lack of communication between these characters is the true tragedy. The real reason for Lydia’s death remains a mystery for them to the end. 

It is also worth noting that in both this novel and Bel Canto, an omniscient voice apart from the characters exists, which creates a POV contract with the reader to justify head hopping. It may feel like splitting hairs, but the first line of Ng’s novel establishes this narrator who exists apart from the characters and has that bird’s-eye view into each character’s head. Quite a different experience from a novel that does not use that omniscient voice and simply flits from one perspective to the next. Ng also restricts the POV to the members of the Lee family, further illustrating that her choice of narration is in the service of theme.

Not Your Typical Mystery

A mystery can be embedded into a novel without it being classified as a mystery. It’s a great way to heighten the tension and stakes in another genre—like a family drama. So, is this novel chiefly a family drama, or is it chiefly a mystery? Another way to frame the question might be: what would this book be without the investigation of Lydia’s death? 

The convention in the mystery genre is that the protagonist is the one who unravels the puzzle and plays the part of sleuth. But the protagonist in this novel is Lydia, the victim. The novel orbits around her absence in present-moment time and her presence in the parallel past timeline. And while every character plays the sleuth to some extent, they never really come together to share what they learn. 

That said, Ng definitely uses features from the mystery genre here. The present-moment timeline is built around finding out how and why Lydia died. The investigation produces questions and revelations that impact the plot. 

There are red herrings:

·         Jack—an innocent friend of Lydia’s made to look guilty thanks to his reputation of hooking up with girls that he deflowers in his car and then dumps a few weeks later. But his bad reputation is only a front, because he has a secret too.

·         Marilyn’s belief that someone broke into the home and took Lydia against her will. 

So, could this novel have been written without the investigation? Yes, but it would be a different book. Lydia’s death would get minimal (if any) follow-through. It would be the tragic end, rather than the catalyst toward both understanding and transformation that it ultimately becomes. 

In Conclusion

Everything I Never Told You was Celeste Ng’s debut novel. It took her six and half years, and four “radically different” drafts, to write, and during all those years she was unsure if she should just quit and get a “real job.” The novel ended up topping Amazon’s Best Books of the Year List for 2014. When asked in an interview about learning how to write, she said, “You need to learn to read others’ work, to take it apart and figure out how it works like a mechanic working on a car.” Which is precisely why we’re here. 

Everything I Never Told You utilizes an unusual structure for a mystery, to great effect. The head-hopping narration creates a strongly realistic picture of what happens when a child dies suddenly and mysteriously. Everyone looks for someone to blame; no one ever truly finds out what happened; and the death becomes the thing their lives turn on—probably forever.

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Michelle Barker is an award-winning author and poet. She is the co-author of two craft books: Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling and Story Skeleton: The Classics. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in literary reviews worldwide. She has published three YA novels (one fantasy and two historical fiction), a historical picture book, and a chapbook of poetry. Michelle holds a BA in English literature (UBC) and an MFA in creative writing (UBC). Many of the writers she’s worked with have gone on to win publishing contracts and honours for their work. Michelle lives and writes in Vancouver, Canada.