Where Reasons End

by Yiyun Li

'Profoundly moving. An astonishing book, a true work of art' Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers

'A masterpiece. This book haunts me more than any other novel I've read in recent years' Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

'Heart-wrenching, fearless, and unlike anything you've ever read' Esquire

'I sit here shaken and, I think, changed by this work' Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers

'A devastating read, but also a tender one, filled with love, complexity, and a desire for understanding' Nylon

'The most intelligent, insightful, heart-wrenching book of our time' Sean Andrew Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

'Captures the affections and complexity of parenthood in a way that has never been portrayed before' The Millions

'Ethereal and electric, radiating unthinkable pain and profound love' Buzzfeed

From the critically acclaimed author of The Vagrants, a devastating and utterly original novel on grief and motherhood

'Days: the easiest possession. The days he had refused would come, one at a time. They would wait, every daybreak, with their boundless patience and indifference, seeing if they could turn me into an ally or an enemy to myself.'

A woman's teenage son takes his own life. It is incomprehensible. The woman is a writer, and so she attempts to comprehend her grief in the space she knows best: on the page, as an imagined conversation with the child she has lost. He is as sharp and funny and serious in death as he was in life itself, and he will speak back to her, unable to offer explanation or solace, but not yet, not quite, gone.

Where Reasons End is an extraordinary portrait of parenthood, in all its painful contradictions of joy, humour and sorrow, and of what it is to lose a child.

Praise for Yiyun Li:

'A masterpiece...[Puts] you in mind of Tolstoy or Chekhov' Sunday Times on The Vagrants

'This is a book of immense power and it will leave you reeling' New Statesman on The Vagrants

'Controlled understatement, scrupulous and unsparing lucidity... A work of great moral poise and dignity.I have not read such a compelling work in years' Independent

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Grief, Mental Health, China, Audiobook

192 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 2019

About the author

Yiyun Li is the author of seven books, including Where Reasons End, which received the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; the essay collection Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life; and the novels The Vagrants and Must I Go. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Windham-Campbell Prize, among other honors. A contributing editor to A Public Space, she teaches at Princeton University.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

sometimes when i finish a book, the only thing i can do is immediately add everything else by the author to my tbr.

for better or worse.

(review to come)

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t have the words for this one, but I’ll try because this book deserves to be read.

This is a bite-sized book at less than 200 pages, and Yiyun Li has left her mark on it, making it feel epic in proportions.

Where Reasons End is an imagined conversation between a mother and her son she lost to suicide. What you need to know is that Yiyun Li also lost a child to suicide, and she wrote this book in months just after.

I’m not sure how I can summarize this well other than to say that Li’s portrayal of grief is honest, precise, poignant, and profoundly resonant, and yet these words are not enough. The care in which she takes with this topic could only be taken from someone who knows it, someone who has lived this grief deep inside her heart.

The searing pain of loss juxtaposed with the intricate beauty of a mother’s unconditional love...It’s a heartfelt masterpiece, and my words are inordinately inadequate.

Thank you to the publisher for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

My reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I had but one delusion, which I held onto with all my willpower: We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time with words”.

Painfully beautiful words are exchanged between a mother and her son.

We know before reading this book that a mother’s son - Yiyun Li’s son Nikolai - committed suicide.

“Adjectives are my guilty pleasure”, Nikolai says.
“I know. You may have to supply me some”.
“Which one word, I wondered, would he come up with to describe my
nowhere-ness?”

“Do you want me to feel sad for myself, too? Nikolai said”.
“I thought about the question. I didn’t know the answer”.
“I’m not as sad as you think, he said. Not anymore”.
“I didn’t need him to tell me that, but wouldn’t it be good, my child, if you could still feel sad as I do, because then you could feel other things as I do, too?
But I didn’t say these words to him. Instead I told him a story about my high school classmates mother”.

How does a mother lose a child?
“I thought about the eight hours between when I dropped him off at the intersection and when he died. Eight hours was a long time. What had happened will always be unknown to me”.

Sorrow - grief - death - suicide:
No words fit...
No thoughts match the feelings of a painful - unspeakable loss-
nothing Yiyun Li could write would be right, or could bring her son back.
But the words Li ‘did’ write feel gut piercing real - A CONVERSATION IMAGINED....
The conversation between the unnamed narrator and Nikolai - are imagined conversations between them ‘both’.
Painfully beautiful....impeccably written.

A very sad book about sadness and loss.....
death by suicide....
A few parts will make you smile.....
Arguing over adjectives was a great pause to laugh...

A mother’s love for her son!!!! I absolutely love and admire Yiyun Li’s writing. I will continue to read more of what she writes.
I’m sorry for her loss.

To my friends - and cousin who also lost a child by suicide - and children by illness - I’m always deeply sorry for your loss - I love you.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where Reasons End is an imagined conversation between a mother and the son she lost to suicide. The unnamed narrator (modeled after Li herself whose 16-year-old son died by suicide in 2017) is a writer, who deals with her loss by writing out a series of dialogues with her son Nikolai - not his real name, but as good as any.

This entire book is essentially an exercise in whether or not it's possible to take linguistic ownership over one's grief. The narrator and her son engage in a series of verbal sparring matches, challenging aphorisms and the kind of common language that surrounds mourning. But as well as bemoaning the limitations of language, the narrator also celebrates what words are capable of. "Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable." The narrator doesn't attempt to reckon with the question of why this tragedy occurred, and she isn't interested in eulogizing her son in these pages; instead it's a candid attempt to come to terms with her loss without losing her identity as a writer and a mother.

"I was a generic parent grieving a generic child lost to an inexplicable tragedy. Already there were three clichés. I could wage my personal war against each one of them. Grieve from Latin gravare, to burden, and gravis, grave, heavy. What kind of mother would consider it a burden to live in a vacancy left behind by a child? Explicate from Latin ex (out) + plicare (fold), to unfold. But calling Nikolai’s actions inexplicable was like calling a migrant bird on a new continent lost. Who can say that the vagrant doesn’t have a reason to change the course of its flight. Nothing inexplicable for me, only I didn’t want to explain: A mother’s job is to enfold not to unfold. Tragedy now that is an inexplicable word. What was a goat song, after all, which is what tragedy seemed to mean originally?"

Where Reasons End simply would not work if Yiyun Li didn't have the superb command of language that she does. For whatever reason, this is the passage that I kept coming back to: "How do you compare sadness that takes over like an erupted volcano to sadness that stays inside one, still as a stillborn baby? People talk about grief coming and going like waves, but I am not a breakwater, I am not a boat, I am not a statue left on a rocky shore, tested for its endurance." But this is the kind of book where you could highlight the entire thing if you're looking for sharp and incisive yet sparse prose.

I will say: this requires a certain amount of mental and emotional investment from the reader; you need to meet Li halfway and you need to want to engage with what you're reading. I don't think I was in the perfect headspace for this novel, hence the 4 stars rather than 5, but it's undeniably brilliant and it's a book that I can see myself revisiting some day.

[But_i_thought_ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel is notable for the searing chasm between its emotional potential and its dry, didactic delivery. Set up as a series of imagined conversations between a mother and her deceased teenage son, mere weeks after his suicide, the book attempts to formulate a kind of philosophy of grief. Mother and son meet up in a world made up of words, a space beyond time, in a language beyond tenses. The premise is all the more harrowing because it is inspired by the author’s own life experience.

And this leads me to the main issue with the book. Perhaps as a result of this very real proximity to pain, Li evicts the reader from the emotional orbit of her story. Much is implied, very little shared. We never get a strong sense of the characters — their circumstances, their psychological textures. Instead, the novel reads like an exercise in Socratic dialogue, a lecture series on etymology and the abstract self-flagellation of a writer grappling with her own inner critic. Mother and son bicker endlessly — mostly about the meaning of words and the correct use of adjectives.

For a novel about motherhood and grief, I found it uncommonly cold, dry, detached and repetitive — a work hostile to the notion of vulnerability. A far more intimate – as well as analytical – account of motherly grief can be found in poet Denise Riley’s book, Time Lived, Without Its Flow.

Mood: Emotionally austere
Rating: 5/10

Also on Instagram.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a generic parent grieving a generic child lost to an inexplicable tragedy. Already there were three clichés. I could wage my personal war against each one of them. Grieve from Latin gravare, to burden, and gravis, grave, heavy. What kind of mother would consider it a burden to live in a vacancy left behind by a child? Explicate from Latin ex (out) + plicare (fold), to unfold. But calling Nikolai’s actions inexplicable was like calling a migrant bird on a new continent lost. Who can say that the vagrant doesn’t have a reason to change the course of its flight. Nothing inexplicable for me, only I didn’t want to explain: A mother’s job is to enfold not to unfold. Tragedy now that is an inexplicable word. What was a goat song, after all, which is what tragedy seemed to mean originally?

Yiyun Li has written a 4 previous fictional books number of novels and the memoire – “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life” – an account of a life in books written over a two year period of suicidal depression and published in 2017. Later in 2017 Yiyun’s sixteen year old son Vincent committed suicide.

This novel, dedicated to Vincent, is a series of dialogues between a Chinese America novelist (and teacher of creative writing) and her son who has recently committed suicide: a son she refers to as Nikolai (a name he had given himself in some of his writings); a son who was a great cook, brilliant oboe player, widely liked, but also one who always had a deeper shadow (some of his early stories or obsessions, causing concern to his mother or even schoolteachers) – but also one who verbally sparred with his mother, openly questioning and challenging the limitations of her writing.

And the dialogues are a continuation of that sparring, questioning and challenging, but now with both of them questioning both what has happened (albeit the question the Mother never asks or even indirectly approaches – is what lead to his actions) and what is now happening to them.

But importantly this is not: a dream, an imaginary or internal verbalised dialogue; or one (Lincoln in the Bardo style) to be imagined as some form of imagined physical encounter – instead it is a dialogue of written words, and effectively as a written story – the only way in which the author Mother knows how to articulate and examine her feelings.

What I was doing was that I had always been doing, writing stories. In this one the child Nikolai (which was not his real name, but a name he had given himself, among many other names he had used) and his mother dear meet in a world unspecified in time and space. It was not a world of gods or spirits. And it was not a world dreamed up by me: even my dreams were mundane and landlocked in reality. It was a world made up by words, and words only. No images, no sounds.

Later:

Some people life by images, some by sounds. It’s words for me. Words said to me. Words not meant for me but picked up by me in any case. Words in their written form. Words that make sense and words that make nonsense.

And

I had but one delusion, which I held onto 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.

Much of their dialogue is playful (even if permanently seen against a background of disquiet and mourning). For example:

I had an exhausting dream, he said the moment I sat down by him one morning. I dreamed that I was a negative number, and I couldn’t figure out my square root.

It’s possible I said. Wait until you learn the imaginary numbers.

Mommy, I’m not stupid, he said. I know imaginary numbers, but I don’t like to deal with that troublesome i.

Or

I hate that word, self indulgence, Nikolai said.
But I don’t mean you. I’ve never called anyone self-indulgent but myself.
Isn’t that a kind of self-indulgence, too?

And much of it is lightly and fondly argumentative – the two argue over the important of reading versus writing

I always imagine writing is for people who don’t want to feel or don’t know how to.
And reading? I asked. Nikolai was a good reader.
For those who do.

And extensively on the importance of nouns against adjectives (Nikolai’s favourite, to which his mother has a marked aversion) – a symptom of a divide between feeling and imagination (Nikolai) and logic/fact (Mother).

And this underlies the Mother’s reliance on the written word – in fact when dealing with her feelings she first writes them down and then seeks to explore them by examining their meaning, but with an emphasis on etymological rather than emotional meaning (of course while being fully aware, by the Nikolai character that she herself is writing, of what she is doing). See for example the opening quote of my review or this sequence of dialogue.

What happens to sentimental when you take time out of it? Nikolai asked.
What?
You are left with gibberish.
What I said – I was dense ……
The word, Nikolai said. Did you notice time is in the middle of sentimental?
I looked up both words. Etymologically it means nothing I said.
What an inelastic mind you have, he said.

Overall a powerful and very different novel, one which I think gains crucially from its authenticity (a novel like this written by someone who was entirely divorced from the actual reality of child-loss would I think be a very different read) and which explores writing through tragedy, and tragedy through writing.

You always say words fall short, he said.
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.
But still he had indulged me in this world of ours, made by words.

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 3 out of 5]

آن جا که دیگر دلیلی نیست داستان رنج است ، داستان درد و جدایی ، حکایت زجری ایست که عقل را نابود کرده و روانی پریشان و رنجور به جا گذاشته.
کتاب یی یون لی روایت غمی ایست که امان او را بریده ، داغی که راوی داستان دیده و دردی که کشیده را نمی توان در هوشیاری وصف کرد ، او از خود جدا شده و ذهن او روایتگر گفت و گوهای نویسنده با عزیز رفته می شود . این جاست که مرز میان مرگ و زندگی از بین می رود ، جسم و زمان معنی خود را از دست می دهد و سخن میان مانده و رفته و زنده و بی جان شکل می گیرد .
نوشتن این مکالمات رنج راوی داستان را کم نمی کند ، او در یاد و خاطره عزیز خود غرق شده ، درد و رنج فراق و جدایی او ابدی و همیشگی به نظر می رسد . گفت و گو های خیالی هم نه به پرسش های او پاسخ می دهند و نه مرهمی بر زخم او هستند .
روایت زیبا و شاعرانه خانم یون لی راهی برای رهایی از درد رنج و جدایی نشان نمی دهد ، داستان او چگونگی زیستن در رنج را نشان می دهد ، رنجی که مانند روزهای نخست داغ و سوزان است .

[Bkwmlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

At less than 200 pages, this is a very short book, yet the topic it covers is one that requires quite a bit of time and focus to digest as well as ponder. In this brief but thoughtfully told story, the fictional narrator – a mother and also brilliant writer and teacher – imagines a conversation with her teenage son Nikolai several months after losing him to suicide. There is no plot, no action, and very little in terms of structure – instead of a linear story, we are presented with snippets of conversation between mother and son that is both sobering and honest, yet also profound and heartfelt. At no point does the story try to explain why Nikolai chose to take his own life nor does it attempt to provide any details on what happened -- rather, the mother in the story chooses to channel her grief through discussions with her son about memories both happy and sad, moments in the past and present, each other’s thoughts and feelings, and the language that binds them together the most: words, specifically as it relates to writing, reading, and even grammar usage. The discussions – mostly back-and-forth bantering that sometimes veers toward argumentative, other times philosophical and sentimental – at times also mix with the narrator’s own thoughts and reminisces to form a relatively precise picture of both characters’ personalities as well as the type of relationship they had.

Despite its short length, this is not an easy read by any means, especially with the knowledge going into this that the story parallels the real-life experience of the author Yiyun Li -- an accomplished writer and teacher similar to the unnamed fictitious narrator in the story -- whose 16-year-old son Vincent committed suicide almost 2 years ago. Knowing that writing this book was such a personal journey for Li made the experience of reading it so much more poignant and heartbreaking, yet at the same time I can’t help but admire her strength in the face of such an unspeakable tragedy that no parent should ever have to endure. Li writes with candor here, in prose that is so beautifully rendered that I found myself highlighting something on nearly every page. There were so many passages that made me stop and reflect, gave me food for thought and even made me re-read and cull a deeper meaning that I hadn’t quite expected – this was actually one of the reasons why it took me longer than usual to read this book.

Quite honestly, it is hard for me to assign a rating to this book and it is equally hard for me to come up with words that would adequately summarize the impact of the story contained within its pages. So I will keep this review brief and only say that I encourage people to read this book, irregardless of one’s experience with grief. This may be a small book, but it is deeply insightful. Definitely recommended!

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I looked up the word.  He must have acquired a dictionary’s worth of knowledge.  
 
A meditation on grief, through a lesson on entomology and word play.  
 
Taking its title from a line in Elizabeth Bishop's poem Argument, the narrator (whose biography is similar to the author's) stages an imaginary dialogue with Nikolai, an avatar she has created of her son.  
 
We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it again, this time by words.  
 
The result bears a strong Max Porter's Grief is a Thing with Feathers, with Nikolai playing the role of Crow.
 
Clearly written from the heart (this is Yiyun Li’s own very personal and immediate response to the suicide of her teenage son) but curiously unaffecting due to its rather academic and pretentious tone, with Nikolai a memorably annoying character. Jan's review (Probably the least sad novel about a mother conversing with her 16 year old son after his death by suicide that I'll ever read- https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8...) sums it up perfectly.

I couldn’t help but contrast this unfavorably to another book with which Max Porter was involved, this time as publisher, Han Kang’s The White Book, translated by Deborah Smith.

But towards the novel's end, a possible interpretation suddenly emerges. Nikolai is Jacob Rees-Mogg, calling his dog Quintus as he is the fifth member of the family, and the mother/author David Cameron (mistaking LOL for 'lots of love') and the whole book a metaphor for the national self-destruction that is Brexit.
 
For a more sympathetic review and one which showcases the wordplay, see Gumble Yard's review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
 
2.5 stars

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Where Reasons End” is an imagined conversation between a mother and her 16 year old son after his suicide. The aching feelings of grief at the centre of this novel are made all the more intense knowing that the author herself lost a child to suicide. Yet their dialogue isn’t necessarily about why he ended his life and it’s not even about directly memorializing his life; it’s more an exchange about the nature of being and the way language gives structure to relationships. This tone isn’t surprising given Yiyun Li’s recent memoir “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life” where the author discusses her own depression and suicide attempts. Like in her autobiographical writing, Li doesn’t cut to the heart of emotion but shades in its edges so you feel the bleeding heart of the matter more profoundly. The more their conversation persists the flimsier language feels: “None of the words, I thought, would release me from the void left by him.” As sobering and serious as all this seems, this mother and son make a perfect balance. When the mother’s musing becomes too lofty the son quickly and humorously brings her back to reality. In this way Li captures a beautiful dynamic which persists even after the son’s death.

Read my full review of Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li on LonesomeReader

[Jessie]

I am struggling with understanding the description of the book from this publisher and can not determine whether or not the author wrote this following the death of her own son, as that’s what the description implies. Is that is the case, #wherereasonsend by #yiyunli is a book that I think perhaps should not have been written. Composed in the early months following the suicide of her sixteen year old son, this book tells about a fictional meeting between an author and her deceased son. While I think this book is supposed to represent a reflection on loss, I would describe it as an artless grief, for no reason other than it was written too soon, from too raw a place. I took a class with an instructor once who had lost her son that year and she was too unravelled by her loss to share her craft, it was a grief to watch her struggle in her art in front of an audience. That was this book for me. The two meet in this book in a non world that is sightless and soundless and affectless and communicate by thoughts to one another. Li or the author in the book is too weighted by her own fear to ask her son the questions she wants to and so instead they have short terse discussions that dance around the issues. Perhaps the most painful part of this book is the persnickety, terse, and derisive way she imagines her son talking to her. It so clearly reflects her own guilt about his death and her feelings of inadequacy as a mother. But what is even more tragic I think, is that it describes a cold and critical son, one so unkind and angry, that I can’t imagine that as she continues on her journey of loss, the author will want to see this rendition of him captured on the page. If this is not the case, then I feel that the description of the book is quite confusing, and the book itself, written from a convincing fog, is one that I didn’t take much from in reading it. Thank you to @netgalley for the ARC, opinions are my own.

[Anita Pomerantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short novel imagines a series of conversations between a grieving mother and her dead son. Ostensibly it is about grief and the questions that arise after the sudden loss of a loved one. A loved one that should not have died first. However, I really didn't find this book all that emotionally moving. Some people will describe the mother/son interactions as witty, but for me, the son's voice is very snarky. In some ways, this tone keeps the book from being maudlin. But I will admit to thinking to myself on occasion, "are you sure you miss this kid?" Of course, as a mother, I know how what kids say and what kids feel can be entirely divorced from one another, but the banter kept me from feeling as much empathy as perhaps I was supposed to be feeling.

Putting all that to the side for a moment, this book is about something else beyond loss and death. It is about words. And for me, that was the most compelling reason to read this book. If you are a person who likes to think about the language, how it used, and what it really means, you will love this piece of literature. I see this book as one that will be used in college lit classes forevermore. There's so much to discuss and unpack here that I truly regretted reading it alone.

[Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yiyun Li gives me more to think about than any other current author I have come across. I could read Where Reasons End several more times, get much more out of it, and still be puzzling over parts of the conversation. In this novel a mother, who is a writer of short stories and novels, is having a dialogue in her head with her eldest son, Nicolai, who three months ago committed suicide at the age of 16. This novel was published in 2019; in 2017 Yiyun Li lost her eldest son, Vincent, to suicide at the age of 16.

In selecting your next novel, this might not be the right choice. There is of course the event at the center of the novel, but it is only referenced. Some readers have described the prose in this novel as cold and distant; I felt pain on every page. There is a strong love and deep connection between Nicolai and his mother. Through his mother’s memories, you get to know a very intelligent and passionate young man who by the age of 16 had developed strong interests and the skills associated with those interests. He had good friends and made a noticeable impact on those friends and the adults with whom he interacted. The prose is understated, but the love on both sides is notable.

In addition to the impact on your heart, you will have to fully engage your head to find your way through these afterlife conversations between mother and son. You will not find answers to what seem like the obvious questions. Why did he do it? Did he have any regrets? This is a wide-ranging discussion between two intelligent human beings; it takes effort to follow the discussion’s various paths and shifts in direction.

If a talented and experienced writer were to explore a deeply personal loss by writing a story, this is what you might expect.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the least sad novel about a mother conversing with her 16 year old son after his death by suicide that I'll ever read. The book takes place when the son has been dead for three months, so maybe the idea is that the mother is still numb, but there was very little emotion here at all. Instead, we get wordplay and intellectualizing between these two brilliant but closed off characters, and it's all so delicate that I feel like an oaf for being unmoved by it, especially knowing that Li has experienced a child's suicide.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't like to write negative reviews, especially of books that most people have praised so highly. So let it suffice to say that had I not been reading this one as part of my #BookTubePrizeChallenge, I would have DNF'd it after 50 pages. And now that I have finished it, a DNF would have been the right decision.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second short book in my reviewing backlog was an impressively moving and personal book. The narrator is a writer whose talented sixteen year old son has just committed suicide, and the book takes the form of an imaginary dialogue with him that helps her deal with her grief. There are also plenty of lighter moments, and Li has some interesting insights on writing and language.

[Claire Reads Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️ Yiyun Li is a writer to wrestle with as she herself wrestles with words and with grief. Where Reasons End is a conversation between a woman and her son, who has died by suicide, but it is really a conversation Li is having with herself about the limits of language and time. Li’s books are not easy, they are not always gratifying, and their meanings are rarely self-evident—in this one, as you grasp for solid answers, you often get the sense of trying to wrap your fingers around a shadow or the abyss.

Compare this book to something like Blue Nights, Joan Didion’s account of the loss of her daughter: Where Reasons End is not nearly so tidy and lacks that book’s literary polish and aesthetic catharsis, but Li probably gets much closer to the truth (whatever that may be) in her own unruly, imperfect way. “Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable.” This is certainly a book worth grappling with, however reason-less it may be.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The unspeakable is a wound that stays open always, always, and forever.... There is no good language when it comes to the unspeakable, I thought. There is no precision, no originality, no perfection.”

In the case of Yiyun Li’s novel “Where Reasons End,” the unspeakable is the suicide of the narrator’s 16-year-old son, Nikolai—a boy the same age as Li’s own son was when he took his own life. This book, written in the aftermath of that suicide, is a series of imagined discussions between Nikolai and his mother in the three months after his death. There is no sentimentality or mawkishness here; Li is not angry or accusatory or searching for answers or reasons—“I didn’t want to explain: A mother’s job is to enfold, not unfold.” And that is what “Where Reasons End” does—it enfolds the reader in these conversations between Nikolai and his mother, who banter and argue and reminisce about words and writing and grammar and philosophy with a fierce intelligence that brings their relationship alive and makes its loss all the more profound and heartbreaking. “I had but one delusion,” Nikolai’s mother writes, “which I held onto 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.”

I thought this book was stunning. The suicide of a child must be all parents’ worst nightmare—it certainly is mine. And reading “Where Reasons End” means facing this fear head on and exposing yourself to the full searing force of a mother’s raw grief. It was not an easy read by any means, but one that was so brave and beautifully wrought that I devoured it in spite of the difficulty. There are so many passages from it that I highlighted and could quote here, but I’ll end on something Nikolai’s mother says about her attempt to address her grief through her writing: “Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable.” Li’s words in this extraordinary book do just that. Highly recommended.

I would like to thank Random House and NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

[Arghavan-紫荆 · Rating 2 out of 5]

این کتابو برای دوستی هدیه گرفته‌بودم ولی آب ریخت روش و نشد هدیه بدم و خودم خوندمش؛))
و البته حالا خوشحالم که هدیه ندادمش چون کتابی نیست که راحت بشه دوستش داشت، اولا خوندنش بسیار حوصله میخواد و با این حجم کم یکماه طول کشید تا تمومش کنم و خیلی جاها یه قسمت هایی رو نخونده رد میکردم‌. کل کتاب مکالمه های بسسسیار پراکنده و خصوصی یک مادر با پسرشه، پسری که زنده نیست... موضوع خیلی دردناکیه و متن هم این درد و آشفتگی رو کامل نشون میداد ولی خوندنش برای من خیلی سخت بود و بیشتر جاها ربط جمله‌ها به هم واضح نبود برام... و نمیتونم اینو به ترجمه نسبت بدم چون بنظرم ترجمه خوب و روانی داشت.
•از متن:
گفتم باز شکسپیر می‌خوانم.
نیکولای گفت نمیدانستم دیگر نمی‌خوانی.
نمی‌توانست خبـردار شـود. یک سال پیش ، فردای انتخابات ریاست جمهوری ، گفتم می خواهم هر روز صبح ، قبل از اینکه برایشان صبحانه درست کنم شکسپیر بخوانم ، نمایشنامه هایش را به ترتیب زمانی ، یک دور و بعد دوباره ، هر چند بار که در طول چهار سال بشود . و صبح پس از مرگ نیکولای دست از این کار کشیدم . هنوز یادم هست آخرین صبحی را که با هم گذراندیم ، وقتی از اتاق خوابش بیرون آمد ، کتاب قطوری روی میز ناهارخوری باز بود . تک تک حرف هایمان را تا لحظه‌ی پیاده شدنش از ماشین یادم هست.
پرسید تک تک حرف هایمان ؟
بله .
از کجا بدانیم ؟

[Hulyacln · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Aramızdaki şeyin rüyalardan daha gerçek olduğuna hiç şüphem yoktu. Ama kelimelerdi tek paylaştığımız. Birbirimizi göremiyorduk. Bir rüya nazikse eğer, insana görmek istediğini lütfediyordu.’
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Bir anne 16 yaşındaki oğlu intihar edince ne yapar? Neler düşünür, nasıl yitirmez aklını? Neye sarılır? Giden çocuğunun ardında kalan derin boşluğa nasıl düşmez?
Yiyun Li kelimelere sığınıyor.
Oğlunun ağzından dökülmese de kelimeler, o söylüyormuş gibi hissediyor. Ve anlamaya çalışıyor, ‘neden yaptın? şimdi sonsuz huzurda mısın?’
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Daha önce öykü kitabı Bin Yıllık Dua ve uyarlama eseri Gılgamış’ı okuduğum Yiyun Li bir yas sürecini anlatıyor Akıl Ermeyince’de. Oğluyla girdiği hayali diyaloglar öyle can acıtıcı, öyle buruk ki.. Çok etkilendiğim, pek çok cümlede kendi içime dönüp baktığım, empati kurmaktan korktuğum ancak şiirsel diliyle de hayran kaldığım bir eser oldu Akıl Ermeyince.
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Gülay Tunç’un kapak tasarımı, Serkan Toy’un çok beğendiğim çevirisiyle ~

[Sarah ~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where Reasons End - Yiyun Li


"We feel at a loss for words when they can’t do fully what we want them to, I said."

عمل مؤثر عن الأمومة والكتابة والحزن، في لعبة لغوية مذهلة؛ تكتب أم عن خسارة طفلها، ينتحر مراهق، بدون سبب مفهوم لعائلته وأحبته؛ أمه الكاتبة تكتب هذا العمل وهي تخوض معه محادثات طويلة عن كل شيء في محاولة للفهم .. في بحث عن السلوان.

هذا العمل من تلك الكتب المذهلة التي يصعب الحديث عنها حيث تفقد الكلمات قدرتها على التعبير أمامها، لا قيمة للتقييم أو الخمس نجمات... لأنه لا مثيل له... من تلكَ الكتب التي ستظل معك طوال الحياة... ستعود له دائمًا ستقرأه مرة واثنتين وثلاثة وتقرأ اقتباساتك المفضلة منه،

"حيث تنتهي الأسباب" نص قصير وعذب ومؤثر وحزين.. حزين.. حزين.

ترشيح طبعًا... وأرجو أن يترجم للعربية قريبًا...
~

صباح الأحد، غرّة محرم - 1446 هـ.
كل عام وأنتم بخير.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, but I just didn't have it in me. The majority of it was a rambling mess that I just didn't have the energy to try and sort out. There were bits and pieces scattered throughout that started to make more sense, but honestly I had basically given up on the book by then, so it really didn't matter. Had this book been longer, I probably wouldn't have finished it, but given it's length I plugged through out of principle. There was a lot of potential here, and the premise could have created an amazing book but this just wasn't it. I'm disappointed in the book; maybe there's something here I'm just not getting, and if that's the case, I'm also disappointed in myself for not being able to grasp what this could have been.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The unspeakable is a wound that stays open always, always, and forever... There is no good language when it comes to the unspeakable, I thought. There is no precision, no originality, no perfection.”

“Words fall short, yes, but sometimes their shadows can reach the unspeakable.”

Nikolai reminded me of Max Porter’s Crow and my heart broke a little.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unspeakably beautiful and indescribably heartbreaking, for reasons obvious and uncannily personal. It's been some time since a book left me such a guttural, whimpering wreck.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the premise intriguing and the ideas discussed in the book were interesting but in the end, they didn't really 'grab' me.
3.5* rounded down.

[rachelle (m00dreads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

View this review on my booksta!

“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.”

Reeling from an unimaginable tragedy, Yiyun Li’s muse and narrator seeks succor in the intangible space of her mind, reconnecting with her deceased son in a haven of imagined exchanges. The novel was written only a few months after the author herself lost a child to suicide; and Li’s prose, while stylistically minimal, holds an entire universe in its weight.

A short but substantial read.

Some musings/reflections below:
The banter between mother and son plumbs the depths of grief; they unpack language and memory and the role of both in the aftermath of loss. Imagined-Nikolai’s narrative voice is one of teenage flippancy, but it echoes with a wizened sort of wisdom—one that feels tangential, although not entirely separate from the careful ruminations of his creator. Ironically enough, our unnamed mother wills these conversations into existence in defiance of Time and Death, but Reality hovers over their sanctum like a heavy, translucent veil, impossible to ignore.

Yet it continues to be, owing to her firm and willful insistence. One wonders: is it the need for closure that drives her to these back-and-forth meditations? Is it the all-consuming sadness? The urge to immortalize the ephemeral? Or, paradoxically, is it a scramble for assurance via willing self-delusion? When we lose people, there forms a silent yet bone-deep anxiety over the terrain of their lives that will forever remain uncharted on our maps. Past the turmoil of tenses (he is—was my son, my mom, my friend) and the hollowness of what-ifs, lies a more profound fear that our knowledge of them will always be flawed renditions. Throw in the endless complexities of motherhood, and I imagine that tension exacerbated. For how much can a mother truly know her child, unbound by the autocracies of flesh and blood?

The tragedy is that we are yearning beings with our arms outstretched—us with our careless impudence, and the women who have signed prenups with the grave in exchange for our first breath of joy and suffering—stranded on solitary islands, unable to cross over to the other side. In as much as our parents can’t know us as our own people, so too can’t we know them in the context of their own. So maybe a mother’s love is unconditional not for its charity and altruism, but for its resolute disinheritance of that schism.

That they will love us wholly and completely, in spite of the phases of our lives that they can never witness.

Similarly, perhaps these conversations are a mother’s attempt to run her hands down the contours of a life both intimate and distant to hers. A consolation that she knows its topography, if not the individual secrets that once lived in its boughs.

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, this book is just such a huge mismatch for me, I'm not entirely sure how I ended up reading it. Sure, I put a lot of things on my Goodreads to-read list that I know I'll never get around to reading, but somehow I went an extra step and ended up putting this on hold at the library months ago. I think I read a rave review in a magazine that mentioned how short it was? I really don't remember.

So this is a work of fiction about a mother having a dialogue with the ghost/memory of her teenage son who has committed suicide written by an author whose teenage son committed suicide. She has my full sympathy for her loss.

But this book just doesn't work for me with its rarefied writing style so lost in its wordplay and obsession with etymology, word choice, adverbs, adjectives and nouns. And every tenth sentence seems to be the sort of aphorism I expect will come scrolling up on my Facebook feed one day superimposed on a colorful swirl or some bit of nature photography. Quote lovers should have a field day with this. But people who like quotation marks will not, as they have been excluded.

Finally, this just comes too close on the heels of my reading of Eve Ensler's The Apology where she has a posthumous conversation with her abusive father. I'm used to my literary self-therapy being more heavily veiled in symbolism, I guess, rather than these direct addresses.

[Faroukh Naseem · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you tackle a sensitive subject in a way that is empathetic to those who have faced it and those who can’t imagine what it is like for it to happen. Yiyun Li shows us with her masterpiece.
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#theguywiththebookreview presents Where Reasons End
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A writer imagines a mother conversing with her teenage son who committed suicide. Her conversations are limited to the experiences she’s shared and by what she knows of her son. She’s remembering a few things but it’s more of her trying to understand him too. These conversations seem to take place over a few weeks and they slowly make more sense as we start to picture the son she lost and also as her memories seem to not have much more to give.
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The first half of the book confused me a little because I couldn’t get my head around an imagined conversations but slowly it becomes clear about the rules around which these conversations are taking place.
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The way Yiyun Li has delved into the topic is very careful and measured. The sensitivity of those who are left behind is clear and hauntingly described. A book that will remain with me for ages and one that I’ll be reading again and again.

[Larnacouer de SH · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mevzunun ne kadar kişisel olduğunun farkında değildim en başında. Yazar kendi evladını böyle kaybetmiş. Kurgu olarak yeterince hassas ve kırılgan değilmiş gibi bu detayla daha gerçekçi haliyle sarsıcı oldu.

Kitaptan size nasıl bahsedeceğimi ben de bilemiyorum aslında ama gözünüzü korkutmak istemiyorum; depresif bir metin değil. Altı çizilecek bir sürü cümle var, akıcı, kısacık. Kapağını kapattığımdan beri kitabı tanımlamak için doğru kelime neydi diye düşünüyorum. Dilimin ucunda ama çıkmıyor bir türlü.

Hani şöyle bir şey var ya: Beklemediğiniz anda ince bir sızıyla kendini gösteriyor, canınızı yakıyor, süründürüyor ama varlığını kanıtlamanız nerdeyse imkansız; iyileşmesi zaman alıyor.

Hah, kağıt kesiği!
Gibi.

İnsanın aklı ermiyor gerçekten.

[Jaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was superb wordplay and poetry here but it was just so cripplingly sad that I couldn’t fully enjoy it. A mother holds conversations with her seventeen year old son who has recently killed himself. Li confronts the reader with what it is to lose a child and I am shattered.