Where Reasons End: A Novel
A fearless writer confronts grief and transforms it into art, in a book of surprising beauty and love, "a masterpiece by a master” (Elizabeth McCracken, Vanity Fair).
"Li has converted the messy and devastating stuff of life into a remarkable work of art.”—The Wall Street Journal
WINNER OF THE PEN/JEAN STEIN AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Seghal, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • The Paris Review
The narrator of Where Reasons End writes, “I had but one delusion, which I held on to with all my willpower: We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by words.”
Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship.
Written with originality, precision, and poise, Where Reasons End is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.
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Community Reviews
[b:Where Reasons End|40147915|Where Reasons End|Yiyun Li|https:i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1538195431l/40147915._SX50_.jpg|62283563] explores an imagined relationship between a mother and a son in the aftertime. Since the mother and son both wrote fiction and poetry, [b:Where Reasons End|40147915|Where Reasons End|Yiyun Li|https:i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1538195431l/40147915._SX50_.jpg|62283563] also explores the intricacy of language.
One of my favorite quotes (p.83-84):
I've begun to understand, I said, why people hold on to things.
I've begun to understand the opposite, he said. All things tangible, like all nouns, are dispensable.
What's indispensable then?
Adjectives.
That's questionable, I said. What's indispensable, really? I get confused with that question.
Nouns for most people, he said, because living in a world defined by nouns is obligatory.
I thought about his reply. Who can be free of nouns? Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends, lovers, housing, food, career, retirement. We are brave children of braver parents, born into a web of nouns, and we are all like Charlotte, weaving a web for ourselves.
Except Charlotte chooses adjectives, Nikolai said, and she does it to save someone else.
September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day 2020, so it seems perfect that I read this book now. But I came across this book because I saw the Random House Summer Reads event that features [a:Yiyun Li|148348|Yiyun Li|https:images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243545452p2/148348.jpg]'s [b:Must I Go|48806210|Must I Go|Yiyun Li|https:i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1587479673l/48806210._SY75_.jpg|71859606]. Since I have a new goal to read more books by Asian authors, I got excited and borrowed the book by [a:Yiyun Li|148348|Yiyun Li|https:images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243545452p2/148348.jpg] available from my library.
[a:Yiyun Li|148348|Yiyun Li|https:images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243545452p2/148348.jpg]'s writing is poetic. Grief, unconditional love, beauty, appreciation, sadness, and pain are reflected within 200 pages. This book is short, but the emotion is plentiful.
I look forward to reading [b:Must I Go|48806210|Must I Go|Yiyun Li|https:i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1587479673l/48806210._SY75_.jpg|71859606] and more of [a:Yiyun Li|148348|Yiyun Li|https:images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243545452p2/148348.jpg]'s work.
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