Top 10 books about family secrets

Jyoti Patel is the author of The Things That We Lost. Her debut novel is told from the perspectives of 18-year-old Nik and his British Indian mother Avani, flitting between the past and present as Nik searches for answers surrounding the circumstances of his father’s death.

Patel is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Prose Fiction MA and was selected as one of The Observer’s 10 Best New Novelists for 2023.

At the Guardian she tagged ten books that nicely capture "the negotiation that takes place between a narrator and reader when [family] secrets are involved, whether the two stand side by side in unearthing them, or the dramatic irony that charges through a story when truths are revealed to one but not the other." One title on the list:

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

This novel follows the Lees, a Chinese American family living in Ohio in the 1970s. In the opening lines, the omniscient narrator declares: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” Lydia is the middle child, the favourite, whose body is soon to be found in a nearby lake. The narrator moves between the perspectives of each family member, weaving together the secrets each holds, allowing the reader to see the misunderstandings and miscommunications between them as they grapple with their grief and the mystery of Lydia’s death.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Everything I Never Told You is among Kasim Ali's nine books about interracial relationships and Rachel Donohue's seven “coming-of-age” novels with elements of mystery or the supernatural.

--Marshal Zeringue