Where Reasons End

  Every now and then you read a book that is difficult to critique and review.  Sometimes it's because the book exists outside of genre.  At other times it's because the book is too odd to really analyze.  And at other times it's because the book is so personal that it feels less like a piece of literature and more like an insight into a person's soul, and it kind of feels wrong to critique and review a person's soul.  Where Reasons End is firmly one of those books.  With that said I'll still do my best to talk about this remarkable work.    Where Reasons End is a series of 16 short chapters that detail conversations between the narrator and her 16-year-old son who recently committed suicide.  On the surface that makes the book sound like a fantasy novel, but there is nothing fantasy-like about this book.  It's unclear whether or not this narrator is hallucinating these conversations but it almost doesn't matter.  What is important is that she certainly feels like she's having these conversations and they appear to have an impact on her.  As you can guess, Where Reasons End is not a happy book.  You can feel the narrator trying to cope with her loss as she talks to her son, who seems to be indifferent to his mother's suffering.  They talk about his life before his suicide, her life as it happened and how she imagines her life will be afterwards.  But (at least for me) this book doesn't feel like a knife driven into my chest over and over again.  It feels more like I'm being beaten by a dull hammer repeatedly (emotionally of course).  I feel like that's what Li was going for.  Rarely have I seen a book so accurately depict depression.  Depression is not a feeling of constant overwhelming sadness.  It often feels like a constant wave of mind-numbing apathy towards your existence and surroundings.  Yes there are some particularly rough moments but a lot of depression is a general lack of feeling.  Li is able to convey her narrator's emotional state in a brutal and totally believable fashion.     Li's ability to display her narrator's emotions in a convincing fashion isn't surprising given her own back story.  Just like the narrator in this book, Li lost her 16-year-old son to suicide.  This adds a whole extra layer to just how sad this book is.  In many ways Where Reason Ends feels like a mother's attempt at processing her own grief.  There is no clear point where it's the narrator talking or Li herself talking.  You can feel Li herself asking questions about why her son killed himself and if she could have done anything differently to stop it.  It's no wonder then that this book doesn't really end with any resolution.  The grief will always be there for Li and her narrator.  How can it not?    Where Reasons End is a book that feels outside the realm of criticism and analysis, but for my money it's pretty stellar and a genuinely incredible work of literature. 

This was a weird one to swing to moments after reading The Vagrants, but I liked it! I struggled with the style (might have been an audiobook thing, just because it's so dialogue heavy and sort of hard to distinguish who is who sometimes) but I found it really moving.

I was really excited for the concept of this book. The emotion was real and there were some solid, impactful lines, but overall it felt circular and nonsensical, like things were being said but in way too many words. I didn't feel connected and, though this was a short book, I felt like I was slogging through.

Laura sent me a link to an Instagram review someone had written for this book. The person who penned this reflection captures my emotions and frustrations so beautifuly that I can't help but just share it here:

[Where Reasons End] is a book of imagined conversations between a mother and her recently-deceased son. I can best describe this book as autobiographical fiction as the author, #YiyunLi wrote this novella in the aftermath of her own son's suicide. Which is perhaps why it doesn't make sense; it comes from a place of incredible pain, and oftentimes with grief, try as much as one can, the world doesn't make sense. In the case of this book, the words don't make sense.

With a verbose mess of sentences debating the use of nouns, adjectives and adverbs, and basically, writing in general, this book does its best to keep you out of touch with any kind of emotion. Every other character, I don't know if I can call them that, as no one features for more than two sentences here, even the younger brother and the father. It's just mom and son meeting up in a world devoid of time or tense, made up of words only. Through this made-up conversation, Li seems to have one purpose - criticising her parenting prowess and her writing skills. And the critique comes in the voice of her son. Why?

So basically, I don't understand this book. Sentence after sentence, relentlessly, one philosophical rumination leads to another. It's just too much, especially when they lead nowhere. Also, it is not entirely believable when you make a 16-year old sound like Socrates.

However, all said and done, I cannot contest that Li is a magnificent writer, and I'll definitely pick up some of her earlier works of fiction someday, but I do contest the purpose of this book. 2 stars!

irreconcilable