Many Little Fires by Celeste Ng (Little fires everywhere)

“Many small fires” (Bollati Boringhieri, 2018) is the second novel by the American author Celeste Ng, who became a well-known name thanks to her debut work, “What I never told you”. Ng tells with a meticulous and sharp pen the daily life of Shaker Heights, an orderly and wealthy town in Ohio. Many Little Fires is written in the third person and this allows the reader to analyze the facts from the point of view of multiple characters. Celeste Ng masterfully moves along the time line, to narrate the youth of the two prominent female figures and reveal their intriguing details. Particularly brilliant are the close and pressing dialogues, mostly heated discussions, between the two main protagonists, Mia and Elena, diametrically opposed for the life choices undertaken. The text deals with important themes, such as racism, motherhood and adolescence, and gives us an interesting portrait of an American community in the late nineties of Ohio. The pages flow well between the fingers of the curious and voracious reader. And if "Many Little Fires" was to your liking, you can also enjoy the miniseries based on the novel of the same name and landed on Prime Video in March, 2020, with Reese Whiterspoon and Joshua Jackson.