Faye is a novelist teaching a week-long writing workshop in Athens. She meets a man on the plane to Greece, which kickstarts a series of conversations that structure the entire narrative. These conversations are with other writers, students, acquaintances, and each conveys a snapshot of that person's life. We hardly get any context due to the brevity of character interactions, and we know very little about Faye. In fact, we only ever pick up on who Faye is through her conversations but never enough to wholly understand her in the way we might expect for a novel. Hence, she is only an outline of a woman/person, as are the people she converses with. Cusk's novel is then a series of brief and, at first, seemingly unconnected conversations. 

Everything I Never Told You mostly takes place in the 1970’s and begins with the death of 15-16 year old Lydia and how her family essentially copes with her death. I enjoyed reading this book because I found the concepts of race, interracial marriage, and motherhood interesting with regards to how they unravel throughout the novel. Ng’s prose is beautiful and overall she writes about family conflict quite well, but I did have issues with some of her characters.