Informationen zum Autor Yiyun Li Klappentext 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.

“Where Reasons End belongs to a band of books produced in the forge of intense pain; their authors, aristocrats of suffering—think of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, Joan Didion’s memoirs of the deaths of her husband and daughter in close succession. . . . For Li, to apply her own language to suicide means to understand suicide as the most private of decisions, to address it without cheap sentiment or condemnation. . . . As the title alerts us, this book takes place in a territory beyond reason, in all its connotations—beyond explanation or understanding. The mother does not require them. In the final reckoning, there is nothing she needs from Nikolai other than his company, his ghost; to carry him for a moment more, to keep the story going.”—The New York Times

“This expansive, heartfelt examination of grief in novel form moves through a series of conversations between the mourning mother and her elusive, yet vividly present son. This utterly original novel will move anyone who has experienced loss in any form.”—Jan Weissmiller, Forbes

“Yiyun Li’s gutting novel imagines a conversation between a mother and child, months after the child’s suicide. The prose is ethereal and electric, radiating unthinkable pain and profound love.”—BuzzFeed

“Li’s creative engagement with words and with their insufficiency and her willingness to confront the most haunting truths equip her to write a book about grief unlike any other.”—HuffPost

“The most intelligent, insightful, heart-wrenching book of our time. I will be pressing this into everybody’s hands, saying: ‘Read this, read this now.’”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less

“I received Yiyun Li’s galley tonight, began almost against my will, and have now just closed it. Some of the words forming are ones that Nikolai would find fault with so I will swallow them. But I sit here shaken and, I think, changed by this work.”—Katherine Boo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers

“Where Reasons End is about the saddest thing in the world, and yet the experience of reading it is mysterious and expansive, as though the limits of all things—language, love, and life—are further than we ever imagined. These stories—astonishing in their compassion, their scope, their private jokes, and their longing—are for anyone who has ever wished that a loved one could have found a way to stay a little longer. An extraordinary book by one of our most extraordinary writers.”—Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck & Other Stories

“The worst thing that can happen to a parent is the death of a child. In this brilliant, moving book the mother continues her dialogue with her intelligent and sometimes acerbic son. Together they contemplate the paradoxes that beset our experience. This is a burning message from one of our best writers.”—Edmund White, author of The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading

Autorentext

Yiyun Li

Klappentext

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.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Do Not Let Mother Dear Find Us

Mother dear, Nikolai said.

I was surprised. He used to only call me that when I wasn’t paying attention. But here I was, holding on to my attentiveness because that was all I could do for him now. I’ve never told you how much I loved you calling me that, I said.

What did you call Grandma?

When I was your age? Mamita, I said.

That was endearing, he said.

You have to get the name right when you find the person hard to endear, I said. Endear, I thought, what an odd word. Endear. Endure. En-dear. In-dear. Can you out-dear someone?

And fancy seeing you here, Nikolai said.

One of us made this happen, I said.

I blame you.

I laughed. Ever so like you, I said. I then explained the liberty I had taken to get myself here. For one thing, I had made time irrelevant.

I could be sixteen like you are, I said, or twenty-two, or thirty-seven, or forty-four.

I would rather you are not sixteen, he said.

Why not?

I don’t want to feel the obligation to befriend you.

We can still be friends even if I am of another age.

I don’t like making friends with older people. Besides, one can’t really be friends with one’s mother.

Can one not?

No. The essence of growing up is to play hide-and-seek with one’s mother successfully, Nikolai said.

All children win, I said. Mothers are bad at seeking.

You did find me.

Not as your mother, I said. Don’t you notice the sign there (though I knew he couldn’t have—I had hung it up while talking with him): Do not let mother dear find us.

What are you then?

Oh, a runaway bunny like you. How else did we end up here?

Here, as I watched my neighbor leave, a box of fresh-baked chocolate cookies in my hands, was a place called nowhere. The rule is, somewhere tomorrow and somewhere yesterday—bu…