One of my favorite John Mayer songs is called Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967. It’s a very long name but also a very good song – take a listen here.
As a result, one of my favorite internet debates (mainly because it’s just so, so low stakes) is about what ultimately happens to the song’s protagonist, Walt Grace. The first part is clear – he builds himself a submarine and sets out into open water – but the debate centers around whether or not he survives the trip.
For a long time, I thought he didn’t. It was a homemade submarine, the weather was bad, his friends talk about him wistfully at the bar – how would he possibly survive? But the more I listen to it – and especially within the past couple of months – the more convinced I am that he did make it. He took his little homemade submarine all the way to Tokyo, finally finding the new space he was hoping for while he toiled away for all of those months.
It’s a shift in interpretation – and perspective – on my part. I’m sort of obsessed with the idea that someone took a chance on something and succeeded in spectacular fashion, even when others doubted him. It’s hard to not root for the underdog, so that part isn’t new – it just took me a little while to think of Walt Grace that way.
That idea kept popping into my head as I read this week’s book. Little Fires Everywhere is based in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an idyllic town where the perfectly manicured people match the perfectly manicured homes. Things in the town are only upended by people who are considered outsiders – or so it seems.
The reader has the chance to peer into the minds of almost every character – the beauty of a story told in third person. As the book goes on over the course of a year, we see the characters change relationships, adjust their perspectives and grow their opinions. Most of the people are high schoolers, so it makes sense, but you see many adults shifting as well. It’s refreshing!
The central controversy is over a young girl abandoned at a fire station and adopted by a family of another race (may sound familiar if you watched This Is Us last week); when the birth mother reappears and wants her child back, the town is divided on what should happen next. More interesting than the initial sides people take is how they change their opinions based on their understanding of the world around them.
The title itself is addressed in the book – sometimes things have to burn down in order to build up, to start over. I don’t subscribe to that concept all the time, but it absolutely can be true. It’s true in the book and it’s true in the song – we can’t be totally sure what’s an ending and what’s a beginning. Only you can decide which way you see it – even if it takes you a little while to shift your understanding, and even if it doesn’t look the same as when you started.
You’ll like this if: you’re looking for an easy-to-read but layered book that dives deep into the nuances of other peoples’ brains.
Happy reading!
Suggested Reading:
– Celeste Ng tells The Strategist about her travel essentials
– carlyreads review of another Celeste Ng book, Everything I Never Told You
carlyreads 