Small-town Ohio in the 1970s is the setting for Celeste Ng’s “Everything I Never Told You,” a literary novel that local residents voted as their choice for the Clinton County Reads book in 2016. The month-long, county-wide reading program will run from mid-March to mid-April.
“Everything I Never Told You” is the debut novel of Celeste Ng (pronounced “Ing”), who spent part of her childhood in Shaker Heights, Ohio, growing up in a family of scientists. She attended Harvard University and received a master of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan. Ng’s first book was a New York Times bestseller and Amazon’s No. 1 Best Book of 2014. It also earned a place on “best books of the year” lists of more than a dozen major publications.
“A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, ‘Everything I Never Told You’ is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another,” according to the publisher, Penguin Random House.
The Clinton County Reads steering committee selects titles for the ballot based on literary merit and themes that lend themselves to programming and conversation throughout Clinton County. The committee times the announcement to coincide with holiday book-giving and to allow ample opportunity to read the selection prior to the Clinton County Reads events in the spring.
Clinton County Reads is sponsored by the Blanchester Public Library, the Sabina Public Library and its New Vienna branch, the Wilmington Public Library and its Clinton-Massie branch, and BooksNMore.org. Copies of “Everything I Never Told You” are available at the library locations as well.
Serving on the Clinton County Reads 2016 steering committee are: Nancy Ehas, chair; Eileen Brady, Joy Brubaker, Peggy Dunn, Chris Owens, Bonnie Starcher, Marla Stewart, Joni Streber, and Mary Thomas Watts.
