Little Fires Everywhere misses important background about Izzy and Elena
Little Fires Everywhere spoilers below.
In Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere, the TV adaptation of Celeste Ng's best-selling novel of the same name, Izzy and her mother Elena have a difficult relationship.
The pair lock horns over every issue, discussion and debate. If Elena goes left, Izzy will go right, often just to provoke her.
At times, you find yourself wondering if there is any love between them at all, until there's a brief flicker of concern or tenderness. But just as quickly as it arrives, it's extinguished and the battle lines are drawn once more.
Buy the Book Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Izzy is the youngest of the four Richardson children and in the TV series, she was not planned. Elena is visibly devastated when the doctor tells her that she is expecting another child, making her grief known to her husband Bill, her mother and you, the viewer.
Children were always on the cards, but so was a career, and while three offspring had
simply "derailed" her journalism ambitions, a fourth was essentially the nail in the coffin.
But after deciding to keep the baby following Bill's assurances that they would manage and her mother's insistence that she should concentrate on her family full-time, Elena is soon pushed to breaking point.
Marshalling four children on her own was always going to be predictably overwhelming, but Izzy compounds Elena's fatigue and helplessness. She is a deeply unhappy baby, crying non-stop, refusing to soothe, even as her mother begs her to.
Still, all of that doesn't explain why Elena is exceptionally tough on her youngest child, fiercely rebuking Izzy while gently nudging Trip, Lexie and Moody.
Elena relentlessly holds her to higher standards, coming down hard on her misconduct, while instantly forgiving her siblings' misdemeanours, in turn fanning the flames of Izzy's rage. And so the cycle continues.
As a baby, she tested her mother, and as a teen she tests her further still. But that doesn't explain Elena's searing disapproval of her youngest child and everything that she does.
As is so often the case, the book explores that aspect of the narrative in significantly richer detail.
"She was usually annoyed with Izzy for some reason or another," writes Ng. "The roots of her irritation were long and many branched and deep. It was not... because she had been an accident, or unwanted. In fact, it was quite the opposite."
Elena "wanted a large family", and after she had given birth to Moody she wanted another child, contrary to the TV adaptation. But with baby number four came endless struggles.
We're told that Elena's morning sickness was "terrible", combined with "bouts of dizziness and vomiting that didn't end with the first trimester, but continued on unabated – if anything, more vigorously – as the weeks went on".
Elena's pregnancy then took an alarming turn when she started to bleed and was placed on bed rest. Izzy arrived eleven weeks early.
We're given an in-depth account of Elena's acute fear, Mrs Richardson engulfed in a "vague, terrifying haze".
We're told that Izzy spent her time "curled in a glass box", Elena "pressing her nose to the glass to be sure Izzy was still breathing", monitoring her daughter for the worst.
But even on leaving the hospital and growing at an impressive rate, even despite Izzy's "tenacity of will", Elena was warned that her daughter might have to deal with a raft of life-altering health problems: vision issues, hearing loss, heart defects, seizures, cerebral palsy, and so on.
Elena would continue to "scan" Izzy for any of those health problems over the next decade. Her anxiety would spike if her daughter showed signs of any issues, whether she looked slightly pale or had a wobble of any sort, however minor.
And even when she'd managed to put everything that happened in those early days behind her, Elena's body remembered it all "on a cellular level", and her focus on her daughter remained "microscopic" as she continued to scrutinise her for "weakness or disaster".
Through a desire to protect Izzy and shield her from harm, Elena chided and suffocated and micromanaged her on every level – and the more she watched her, the more "that feeling of things spiralling out of control coiled around her again, like a muscle she didn't know how to unclench".
In turn, "resentment began to sheathe concern".
While the Richardson matriarch shouldered the vast majority of hospital visits and doctor's conversations, Bill was busy building his law practice, his attention drawn elsewhere. That explains his more laissez faire approach towards his youngest child, and Izzy's softer attitude towards her father, while her relationship with her mother continued to disintegrate.
"Izzy pushing, her mother restraining," writes Ng. "And after a time no one could remember how the dynamic had started, only that it had existed always".
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