Celeste Ng on her not-so-speculative new book ‘Our Missing Hearts’
‘Little Fires Everywhere’ author Celeste Ng brings her new bestseller to the L.A. Times Book Club.
Good morning, and welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter.
Celeste Ng calls her new novel “scarily real.” It’s also compulsively readable.
From the first page of “Our Missing Hearts,” Ng draws us into the world of a lonely boy named Bird and his search for his mother, a poet-activist driven into hiding in a society that outlaws dissent and legitimizes racism.
Our December book club pick is set in a near future, and it’s a deeply human story about family, frailty and fear that resonates in this moment.
Ng acknowledges that her new book is a departure from the Midwest suburban settings of her debut, “Everything I Never Told You,” and bestseller-turned-Hulu series, “Little Fires Everywhere.” But after the 2016 election, she found herself leaning in to speculative fiction.
“I’d never written anything that wasn’t strictly realist,” Ng says in a new interview with The Times. “I was thinking, well, how do I do this? How do I create a world?”
She began reading dystopian genre classics, such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, and contemporary works, including Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One” and Leni Zumas’ “Red Clocks,” a 2018 novel that imagines an America where abortion is banned and embryos have constitutional rights.
On Dec. 8 Ng will join book club readers for a conversation with Times columnist Patt Morrison about “Our Missing Hearts,” which has been parked on bestseller lists since its October release. Times reviewer Bethanne Patrick calls the novel stunning.
December’s live-streaming book club night starts at 6 p.m. Pacific. Sign up and get autographed books on Eventbrite.
What would you like to ask Celeste Ng? Please share your comments and questions in an email to bookclub@latimes.com.
Meet Tracy Kidder
On Jan. 26 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder will join book club readers to discuss his upcoming book “Rough Sleepers” with Times columnist Steve Lopez.
The bestselling author of “Mountains Beyond Mountains” and 2017’s “A Truck Full of Money,” Kidder returns with a deeply researched exploration of the nation’s homeless crisis and the systematic failures behind it.
Kidder spent more than five years riding with Dr. Jim O’Connell and the Boston street team that navigates the city in a van at night, providing medical care, wellness checks, socks and soup to the city’s unhoused population.
“This is a compassionate report from the front lines of one of America’s most intractable social problems,” says Publishers Weekly.
Kidder notes that the book’s title, “Rough Sleepers,” borrows a 19th century British term for people who survive on the streets.
Join Kidder and Lopez for this virtual book club night at 6 p.m. Pacific on Jan. 26. Sign up on Eventbrite.
More about our January guests: Kidder has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes for his work. His 2003 book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” chronicled the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti. His other books include “Strength in What Remains,” ”Home Town,” “Old Friends,” “Among Schoolchildren,” “House” and “The Soul of a New Machine.”
Lopez has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001 and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist for commentary who has written extensively about housing and rising homelessness in Los Angeles. He is the author of three novels and a bestselling nonfiction book, “The Soloist,” the subject of a DreamWorks movie. His new book, “Independence Day,” was published in November.
Fall Fiction
This fall we’ve had the opportunity to meet some of the top fiction authors writing today at a mix of virtual and in-person book club nights. Here’s a quick recap:
Percival Everett, the author of “Dr. No,” joined us Nov. 16 at the Autry Museum of the American West for a conversation with columnist LZ Granderson about his life writing and teaching fiction.
An English professor at USC, Everett has gained international accolades for his body of work: 34 books including novels, poetry, short story collections and a children’s story. “The Trees” was a 2022 finalist for the Booker Prize. His novel “Telephone” was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist. At book club night, Everett revealed that he still writes all of his books ... in pencil.
When asked what kind of writer he was as a kid, Everett shared that his baseball coach moved him from the outfield to third base to make him stop reading during games. Things were slow in the outfield, Everett said, so he had Kurt Vonnegut tucked in his glove.
The Autry audience included Cord Jefferson, the writer-director of an upcoming film based on Everett’s novel “Erasure” that stars Jeffrey Wright (“Westworld”). Jefferson graciously accepted our impromptu invitation to join Everett and Granderson on stage.
In October, National Book Award finalist Lydia Millet joined us in Los Angeles to discuss “Dinosaurs,” the latest from the author of “A Children’s Bible.”
In September, bestselling novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia joined us from Vancouver to discuss “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau,” a modern reimagining of the HG Wells sci-fi classic. Watch here.
Keep reading
New releases: Here’s a rundown of December’s must-read books, which include a spy master’s private letters, a fiercely feminist western, a Gen X caper and an adventure tale on the Greenland ice cap.
Monterey mystery: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley is back with “Dangerous Business,” a Gold Rush-era California sex worker mystery.
California stories: Columnist Gustavo Arellano shares four favorite books about Latinos released this year. He calls them “perfect Christmas presents for anyone who cares about the state.”
Debut thriller: Before S.A. Cosby’s “Blacktop Wasteland” captured critical attention, and before “Razorblade Tears” made it to President Obama’s summer reading list, Cosby’s first novel arrived to barely a blip. Flatiron Books has issued a paperback re-release of “My Darkest Prayer.”
Save the date: The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books returns in person on April 22-23 on the USC campus. Tell us: What are you most looking forward to this spring?
Reader reviews
Thank you to all the book clubbers who reached out to share the books they liked best in 2022. Here are some of your picks:
“Properties of Thirst” by Marianne Wiggins. “I loved her characters from the beginning,” says Phyllis Sharum. “It’s a saga, so to speak. The creation of a Japanese internment camp, water rights in the Owens Valley (remember ‘Chinatown’?), fierce women and of course, a love story is threaded throughout the novel. There is also a back story, in that the author suffered a serious stroke while writing the book. Her daughter and colleagues from USC helped bring the story over the finish line.”
“The Marriage Portrait” by Maggie O’Farrell. “I loved the language, especially the wedding scene,” says Frank Peters. “My book club will read it in February; they’ll love it. The foreshadowing of her death sets a tone from the beginning, a clever setup for the ending. I knew I’d enjoy the book because I loved ‘Hamnet,’ read it twice. Can’t wait to read TMP again, too.”
“The Swimmers” by Julie Otsuka. “‘The Swimmers’ is a beautiful jewel of a book, with rich language that begs to be savored, centered around a group of community pool swimmers and how the shared experience of loss binds us together,” says Jhoanna Belfer, owner of Bel Canto Books in Long Beach. “Julie Otsuka is one of my #autobuy authors because she’s a master of the short novel.”
“The 1619 Project” by Nikole-Hannah Jones and “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. “Both of these books appeal to my two favorite genres, history and sci-fi/fantasy,” says Christopher Moffatt.
“The Library of Legends” by Janie Chang. Reader Margaret Ann Travis says she enjoyed the “mix of a turning point in Chinese history blended with the exodus of the gods and the students’ long journey to save the books.”
“Blood, Sweat and Chrome” by Kyle Buchanan. “It’s a page-turning, behind-the-scenes look at the making of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’” says entertainment audience engagement editor David Viramontes. “It features interviews with director George Miller, the actors, designers, critics, fans and everyone else who created and was affected by the film.”
Last word
“We talk a lot about people needing to tell different kinds of stories, which I think is really important,” says Celeste Ng, who supports the nonprofit group We Need Diverse Books. “I’ve been very fortunate that I had people behind the scenes who also thought that, and who would champion me. So I’ve been thinking that one of the things we really need when we talk about adding diversity to the publishing world is not just on the writer end, but actually at every step of the process.”
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