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A review by archytas
Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
"Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable.
Words don’t have shadows, Mommy. They live on the page, in a two-dimensional world. Still, we look for some depth in words when we can’t find it in the three-dimensional world, no?
You look for it, do you mean?
I don’t look for anything now, he said."
This is an exquisitely painful book. A conversation a mother imagines with her 16 year old son after his suicide, written in the months after Li's own 16-year-old son died, is often almost unbearably full of pain. Li cycles around conversations about language, coping, about the child's passions, such as baking. The conversations are idealised versions of how we wish we could communicate, each word perfectly chosen, and yet through it all is such an immense absence. The text is simultaneously about managing grief and about the impossibility of that.
"None of the words, I thought, would release me from the void left by him."
Words don’t have shadows, Mommy. They live on the page, in a two-dimensional world. Still, we look for some depth in words when we can’t find it in the three-dimensional world, no?
You look for it, do you mean?
I don’t look for anything now, he said."
This is an exquisitely painful book. A conversation a mother imagines with her 16 year old son after his suicide, written in the months after Li's own 16-year-old son died, is often almost unbearably full of pain. Li cycles around conversations about language, coping, about the child's passions, such as baking. The conversations are idealised versions of how we wish we could communicate, each word perfectly chosen, and yet through it all is such an immense absence. The text is simultaneously about managing grief and about the impossibility of that.
"None of the words, I thought, would release me from the void left by him."