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Quarantine Life Lessons From Nicola Yoon’s ‘Everything, Everything’

With most of the U.S. population under some type of stay-at-home measure, it may feel like we’re Madeline Whittier from Nicola Yoon’s 2015 blockbuster young adult novel Everything, Everything. The 17-year-old character stays home her entire life after her doctor mother diagnosed her with severe combined immunodeficiency, meaning she’s allergic to pretty much everything.

Maddy’s illness keeps her indoors all day every day. Her mother takes every precaution to make sure Maddy’s bubble stays clean, with the assistance of Maddy’s home nurse Carla. But once Maddy lays eyes on her new neighbor Olly outside her bedroom window, she questions the lifestyle her mother put her in after her father and younger brother died years before.

Since Maddy stayed inside for 17 years, she has moments in the book that reflect on what many may be experiencing now amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

KEEP THE CONSTANT ONLINE INTERACTION

At the start of the chapter “Secrets,” Maddy expresses how her online communication is reducing her sleep: “My constant IMing with Olly is catching up with me. I fall asleep during not one but two movie nights with my mom. She begins worrying that something’s wrong, that my immune system is compromised somehow.”

As Maddy and Olly mostly depend on online interaction, they exhibit the qualities many people are feeling now with using social media like Instagram Live and videoconferencing tools like Zoom to stay in touch because they can’t see each other in person. Authors are using IG Live to read their works, give writing lessons, and interview each other. Book clubs have found refuge with Zoom to keep their book selections on schedule and continue or start face-to-face meetings.

MAKE FANCY HOME-COOKED DINNERS

The “Menteuse” chapter describes the dinner traditions between Maddy and Pauline, which sometimes include Carla. “Everything at Friday Night Dinner is French. The napkins are white cloth embroidered with fleur-de-lis at the edges. The cutlery is antique French and ornate. We even have miniature silver la tour Eiffel salt and pepper shakers.”

She goes on about how Pauline likes to make cassoulet, “a French stew with chicken, sausage, duck, and white beans.” Except their cassoulet only contains the white beans because of Maddy’s allergies.

One of the conversations that keeps coming up online during the coronavirus isolation is people are either learning to cook or taking pleasure in cooking their own meals. To dress up dinner night, incorporate a theme to keep spirits high at least once a week for yourself or your family.

EXAMINE STRANGE DREAMS

In “My White Balloon,” Maddy describes a dream she had about the house breathing in line with her. On an inhale, walls collapse, but on an exhale, they expand.

According to the World Economic Forum, a sleep expert says the reportedly high rate of vivid dreams people are having during the coronavirus lockdown may be due to information and emotional overload. Maddy is having similar dreams early on in the book when she first sees Olly, which revs her up to find out more about him and how to communicate with him.

MOVE THROUGH THE BOOKSHELF

In “Madam, I’m Adam,” Maddy tells us she returns to a lot of her favorite books: “Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt.”

If you have an obsession to outpace your book consumption with buying more books before finishing most of the ones already on your shelf, then this may be the perfect time to make a dent in your home readership. With physical libraries closed, it makes us value the books we own and revisit the ones we love. More people, not really bibliophiles, have done Marie Kondo makeovers on their bookshelves, so bulking up a skimpy bookshelf can still be done with supporting independent bookstores and checking out library e-books through a mobile device.

Everything, Everything was also made into a motion picture in 2017, starring Amandla Stenberg, Anika Noni Rose, and Nick Robinson.

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: The Uncanny

This week’s episode of Little Fires Everywhere explores how two mothers in picturesque Shaker Heights, Ohio who are at odds deal with the early trials and tribulations of motherhood.

Reese Witherspoon is Elena Richardson, a wealthy white housewife with four teens, and Kerry Washington is Mia Warren, a single black artist mother with one teen. They have clashed since the beginning of their relationship until an incident put them against each in a battle over motherhood.

We travel back in time to the early 1980s where both Mia and Elena are becoming young mothers before they are ready.

BEADED BRAIDS

The episode starts with young Mia, played by Tiffany Boone who has an uncanny cadence like her adult counterpart Kerry Washington, in box braids decorated with jumbo beads at the dining room table with her parents, played by the unappreciated Obba Babatundé and Melanie Nicholls-King, and brother Warren, played by Aubrey Joseph, praying over her success in New York as an art student. At school, Mia finds her classroom and becomes enamored with her new professor, Pauline, played by Anika Noni Rose, who wears sleek microbraids with Cleopatra-rivaling beaded necklaces. How young Mia and Pauline are styled is the best fashion of the series that it deserved a shout-out.

Pauline pushes all her students to tap into the “terrifying, repulsive and uncanny” to produce their art. She also takes a liking to naive Mia, whom she invites to a gallery opening after learning Mia had singed parts of a photograph for effect. Mia knows how to play with fire. At the opening, Mia meets Anita, played by Sarita Choudhury, the gallery owner who constantly works with Mia. And Pauline snorts cocaine and offers it to Mia. They eventually end up at Pauline’s place, with Mia sleeping on the sofa.

HOW ELENA BECOMES A MOTHER

We also see a young Elena again like in the previous episode, who’s played by AnnaSophia Robb, preparing to head back to The Shaker Times newsroom after maternity leave with baby Moody. Yet once she starts, she knows she has to keep a hold on her job, especially after her friend gets a promotion to editor. But at the doctor’s office, she finds out she’s pregnant again. She doesn’t tell Bill right away, but young Linda, played by Alona Tal, and young Mark McCullough, played by Andy Favreau, detect it while they’re all having dinner. The McCulloughs had suffered a miscarriage but hadn’t told their friends yet. While Elena is becoming a mother of four, Linda is struggling to even have one child.

This worries her since the family is expanding in the cottage that’s now rented to the Warrens and her budding journalism career is taking a fourth hit. After having baby Izzy, she’s falling apart. Three kids is different than four kids, as Izzy keeps crying and crying. One day, the water is turned off, and Elena begins breaking plates. Bill, the younger version played by Matthew Barnes, arrives home from work where Elena leaves Izzy in his arms and heads to the pharmacy for the pacifiers.

Staring at the pacifiers she’s taken back to the disco night in Paris with her former boyfriend Jamie, played by Luke Bracey. Outside the pharmacy, she calls Jamie. A scene later, she’s in Rochester, New York meeting with Jamie for a beer. Jamie just received his job at The New York Times as an editorial assistant with goals to become a foreign correspondent.

Elena is devastated by the news because her life has hit another roadblock. Jamie wonders aloud what it would’ve been like if Elena stayed in Paris. They eventually move to a hotel, where Elena has to stop the action to pump breast milk into the bathroom sink. She doesn’t recognize herself anymore. Jamie becomes a casualty in Elena’s confusion, and Elena runs out the door and drives back home.

HOW MIA BECOMES A MOTHER

Mia rides the subway to school. That’s where we meet Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams, the man who keeps coming up in Mia’s subway nightmares. He is Joe Ryan and stares at Mia several times on the subway until he follows her out of the station. Equipped with mace, Mia threatens to use it against him. He explains she looks like his wife, Madeleine, played by Nicole Beharie. They’ve been trying to have a baby, so they could pay Mia to carry their child as a surrogate. Mia takes the number.

Soon, she receives a letter from her school that tuition has been suspended for the next year. She desperately needs $12,000. On the Ryans’ sofa, she negotiates that amount to carry their baby. With contracts signed, Mia is given a turkey baster by Madeleine. She admits she’s a virgin, and the innocence washes over her face. Madeleine mirrors Linda with trying to conceive during a time before in vitro fertilization was an inaccessible process.

Mia and Pauline kiss in the dark room while developing photographs and become an item. When Warren comes to visit Mia, he is surprised by her apparent pregnancy. Warren warns Mia that their religious parents wouldn’t approve of the decision, but he gives her music to share with the baby since he won’t be the baby’s uncle technically.

Weeks later, Warren is killed in a car accident. Nine months pregnant, Mia shows up at her family home in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, but her mother refuses to embrace her. The day of Warren’s funeral her mother tells Mia she can’t go to the funeral because it would take away attention from Warren.

Alone in the house, Mia writes a letter to the Ryans about having a miscarriage and calls Pauline to tell her she plans to stay home for awhile. But instead she prepares her car and drives across the country to California. She gives birth to Pearl there.

After getting adjusted in Southern California, she calls Pauline from a payphone. Anita picks up. Mia is confused why Anita would pick up. Anita breaks the news that Pauline died suddenly from ovarian cancer. That’s when Anita promises to help Mia with her art career. Anita also adds she packed up Mia’s belongings in Pauline’s apartment, including the photograph of a naked Mia in the bathtub that was dubbed “Duo” that inspired Elena in the last episode to start doing serious research on Mia.

Pearl grows up in the backseat of the car always driving to a new destination until she’s old enough to be in the front seat when they arrive in Shaker Heights.

Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.

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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ TV Review: Duo

Kerry Washington as Mia Warren and Jesse Williams.

The fifth episode of Little Fires Everywhere ventured into the backgrounds of two mothers in suburban Ohio at odds about who is considered a mother.

Reese Witherspoon is Elena Richardson, a white housewife/journalist raising four teens in a mansion with her husband, who finds herself investigating the woman she rented her family cottage property to. Kerry Washington is Mia Warren, a single black mother who recently moved to Shaker Heights with her teen daughter, has become an enigma for Elena. Mia is fighting for her friend, Bebe Chow played by Lu Huang, to regain custody of the baby girl she had left at a fire station due to the hardships of having no support as recent Chinese immigrant. But Elena’s friend, Linda McCullough played by Rosemarie DeWitt, is planning to adopt the baby. This causes a rift between Elena and Mia who were developing a relationship as so was their combined five kids.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

The episode opens in 1976 in Paris with Elena, the younger version played by AnnaSophia Robb, dancing in a disco with her boyfriend at the time, Jamie, played by Luke Bracey. They’re studying abroad as Denison University students until Elena starts packing her suitcase to head back to Shaker Heights. Jamie is hesitant to join in the packing and admits he doesn’t want to go back home. He wants a global life and tries to convince Elena she wants to do the same. They break up.

Fast forward to 1997 where Elena is using her journalistic skills to research Mia. Her leads end up in New York City where Mia had attended art school. After Linda comes to the newspaper office blaming Elena for the fiasco of her possibly losing baby Mirabelle aka May Ling for Bebe and her supporters, Elena heads off to NYC in a frenzy.

In NYC, Elena bribes the art school’s receptionist with cupcakes to get Mia’s files. On her way back to the hotel, she decides to take a detour to The New York Times, where Jamie works. She asks Jamie to hunt down additional information since the newspaper recently printed a story on Mia selling a photograph of herself pregnant and naked in a bathtub called “Duo.” Jamie says he’ll help and asks Elena to dinner afterward.

Their fancy dinner is going well with Jamie discussing his life as a foreign correspondent and living all over the world compared to Elena raising her four kids and only talking about those kids. When they depart, Elena confesses, when pressed, she wanted to see what Jamie’s life was like after pursuing the dream she thought she would pursue herself. She then asks Jamie to run off with her. In disbelief, Jamie calls Elena selfish and leaves.

THE ROAD TAKEN

Lexie, played by Jade Pettyjohn, is the eldest Richardson daughter who’s also a popular cheerleader dating the popular football player Brian, played by Stevonte Hart. In the last episode, Lexie brags about having sex with Brian. Now, she’s pregnant.

She only confides in Pearl, Mia’s daughter played by Lexi Underwood, who has become more of a pet than a friend. But Pearl is desperate to fit in.

In her car, Lexie wants to tell Brian she’s pregnant until she asks about  the Mirabelle/May Ling situation. Who should have the baby has become a dividing topic in the picture-perfect Ohio suburb. Trying to find an ounce about his interest in children, Brian mentions he’s leaning to Bebe’s side since she’s the biological mother. He also adds he’s not ready for kids at all and doesn’t even want to hear about it. They’re only seniors in high school. With a pained look, Lexie stares straight ahead.

Later, Lexie is at the abortion clinic. When asking for an appointment, she notices one of her mother’s doctor friends in the background. It spooks her. For support, she calls Pearl, who is the shiny example of sincere support. Lexie tells Pearl she’s the only one she’s confided in about the pregnancy, with Pearl earlier holding the pregnancy test and breaking the news to Lexie. Pearl smiles a bit. Until the nurse calls her name. Lexie gets up and quickly apologizes for registering under her friend’s name.

Pearl waits for Lexie, who refuses to go home. She asks why her name was used. Lexie explains it matters if people knew she had an abortion. So Pearl drives Lexie to her home where Mia senses what happened and comforts Lexie. After Lexie relaxes into a nap, Pearl shows her mother Lexie’s discharge papers with her name on them. Mia tells Pearl she doesn’t like how Lexie treats her. Pearl admits she had sex with the eldest Richardson son Trip, played by Jordan Elsass, and it wasn’t what she hoped for. Then Trip calls Pearl.

When Lexie wakes up, she asks Mia what decision she would have made. Perturbed by the question, Mia tells Lexie she needs to trust her decision and adds how she didn’t like the way Lexie used Pearl’s name at the clinic. Lexie complains that she had no one else to turn to. Mia counteracts that Lexie had a million places to turn to.

I think my daughter skipped school to help you and you thanked her by using her name and then demanding she take care of you. I spent two months cooking your diners, working in your house and you never so much as uttered a thank you and now you want more. Pearl may have love to give and give to you, but I do not.

Meanwhile, Pearl meets Trip at a swing set. Trip apologizes to her for being mean during her first time after his youngest sister Izzy, played by Megan Stott, pointed out his tendency to sleep with girls and not care about their feelings. Trip tells Pearl she’s different. “You read The Bell Jar for fun. I don’t even know what the fuck The Bell Jar is still,” he says. “And you’re really really pretty.”

Pearl accepts his apology, and they hold hands.

TOO MANY ROADS

After Elena can’t sleep with Jamie’s words and Joshua Jackson as her husband Bill’s voice messages in her head, she drives into Pennsylvania to meet with Mia’s parents.

They hadn’t seen Mia in fifteen years. Shocked, Elena asks if they ever met their grandchild, Pearl. They say no. They also add Pearl is not their granddaughter.

This confuses Elena. Then it’s hinted Mia was a surrogate who kidnapped the child, which is the reason why she jumps from town to town.

Additional secrets that come up around Mia includes:

  • Mia Warren is Mia Wright. She changed her last name to Warren, the name of her younger brother she lost in a car accident when he was 17.
  • When Pearl asked for the umpteenth time about her father, Mia returns to the nightmare on the subway she’s had in previous episodes where Jesse Williams is coming toward her. Who is he?
  • Mia digs into a memory box after the paternity question. She finds a roll of photos to develop. Once developed, we see Anika Noni Rose appear in the photo. Who is she?

Little Fires Everywhere is streaming now on Hulu. New episodes will arrive on Wednesdays.

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Anika Noni Rose Joins ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ Cast

Anika Noni Rose at an event for The 69th Primetime Emmy Awards (2017) / IMDb

Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose is joining the cast of Little Fires Everywhere.

Variety broke the news Friday that Anika will be guest-starring on the Hulu miniseries expected to debut next year and based on Celeste Ng’s best-selling 2017 novel. Anika, well known for her roles in playing one-third of the Dreamgirls and voicing the first Disney African-American animated heroine in The Frog Princess, will play Paula Hawthorne, an art professor mentor to the younger version of Mia, played by Tiffany Boone. This week, AnnaSophia Robb of The Carrie Diaries TV series based on Candace Bushnell’s young adult novel; Alona Tal, Matthew Barnes, Andy Favreau and Luke Bracey were also named in Deadline as playing some of the characters in flashbacks.

The novel follows struggling artist Mia, played by Kerry Washington, who moves to Shaker Heights, Ohio with her teen daughter, and her neighbor Elena, played by Reese Witherspoon, the traditional suburban mother of four, as their lives intertwine through their children and friends.

Reese with her media brand Hello Sunshine and Kerry with her production company Simpson Street are also executive producing the miniseries. Author Celeste will also serve as an executive producer.

This isn’t Anika’s first time acting in a project based on a book. She also had roles in Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything motion picture; Terry McMillan’s A Day Late and a Dollar Short TV movie; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun movie; Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls motion picture; Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency TV series; Christopher Paul Curtis‘ The Watsons Go to Birmingham TV movie; Gigi Levangie Grazer’s The Starter Wife miniseries; and Alex Haley’s Roots in the 2016 miniseries remake.

‘Little Fires Everywhere’ rounds out casting for Hulu adaptation

Book Launch: ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng