never always reviewed Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li
Interesting to chew through, not very enjoyable to read
3 stars
This book was hard to read! Predictable, since it's mostly about a parent grieving the loss of a child who chose to die. But also, being a book about a Chinese immigrant to the u.s. writer whose son killed himself at 16, written by a Chinese immigrant to the u.s. writer whose son killed himself at 16, made it all the more difficult to read. Since Li is quite explicit about it being a novel, I found myself constantly wondering what was fictional, if anything beyond the basic conceit: the book takes place entirely in the mind of the mother, who maintains a conversation with her now dead son, with the conversation being the bulk of the text of the book. That is, I assume that Li didn't maintain this kind of formal conversation for months following her son's death, other than in the form of writing the novel, but …
This book was hard to read! Predictable, since it's mostly about a parent grieving the loss of a child who chose to die. But also, being a book about a Chinese immigrant to the u.s. writer whose son killed himself at 16, written by a Chinese immigrant to the u.s. writer whose son killed himself at 16, made it all the more difficult to read. Since Li is quite explicit about it being a novel, I found myself constantly wondering what was fictional, if anything beyond the basic conceit: the book takes place entirely in the mind of the mother, who maintains a conversation with her now dead son, with the conversation being the bulk of the text of the book. That is, I assume that Li didn't maintain this kind of formal conversation for months following her son's death, other than in the form of writing the novel, but is anything beyond that fictional? I found myself wondering if any of the details of the author/son and character/son dyads were changed. In some sense how could they be? How could you write something so clearly personal, so intensely grounded, but then choose to change the instrument the son played, or his personality, or what age he first read War and Peace? So I found myself somewhat distracted with these kinds of questions.
I also think I was hoping for that kind of hauntingly beautiful melancholy vibe and this was mostly not that. For better and for worse. Frankly, spending time in this grieving mother's head sucks, and not in the kind of romanticized sadness that exists to push emotional buttons, like most horror movies exist to push our fear button in a safe circumstances. I think it's more honest, but also less enjoyable. Which it should be? But why do we read novels?
One of the main way this manifests -- and in some sense this may be "spoiler-y" but only in the sense of having someone else's opinion in your head before you have to info to form your own: there is essentially no plot -- is that i found the son to be deeply unlikeable. While being unenjoyable, this also felt more honest -- not that I have the relevant loss-of-child experience -- to how the voice of a teenage intellectual would appear in the mind of the mother who he chose to have outlive him. He is constantly criticizing her, her word choices, metaphors, thoughts, actions. We're never given any sense that the mother character finds him unlikeable or out of line, and I'm not sure any of this was the author's intention (I'd guess the opposite, but who knows), but it comes across so strongly. Only at the point where I was reminding myself that this was a voice in the head of the mother and not a character really, was I able to relax a bit. Before that it felt like we had one character and one cardboard cut-out of an unbearable, eye-rolling, superior teen we were supposed to be pretending was: a) a full character, and b) someone we, the readers, could ourselves come to mourn.
Star rating this feels a bit arbitrary. Li yiyun is a fabulous writer. This is my second book of hers, and the second time I come very impressed with her as a writer but not entirely in love with the book as a whole. (The other was the Vagrants and my discomfort is more with English language works that portray China as a horrorshow in general -- even though there is plenty of horror, to be sure! -- than with Li's novel in particular). I guess my take-away message is "i'm glad I read it but I didn't like it"? Or vice versa? Or "it's good; don't read it"?