{"id":10372,"date":"2019-02-25T20:54:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T19:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10372"},"modified":"2019-02-25T20:54:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T19:54:56","slug":"yiyun-li-where-reasons-end-reviewed-by-gurnaik-johal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10372","title":{"rendered":"Yiyun Li | Where Reasons End<\/em><\/strong> | reviewed by Gurnaik Johal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yiyun Li | Where Reasons End<\/em> | Penguin Books: \u00a312.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Whether writing wedding vows or eulogies, there are certain things that we struggle to express in words. \u201cYou always say words fall short,\u201d says Nikolai, the 16 year old son of the narrator in Yiyun Li\u2019s latest novel, Where Reasons End<\/em>. He is speaking to his mother a few weeks after taking his own life. Later in their book-length conversation, the mother says that we \u201cfeel at a loss for words when they can\u2019t do fully what we want them too.\u201d She wants words that can fully describe grief. In a \u201cpersonal war\u201d with clich\u00e9, she notes that there \u201cis no good language when it comes to the unspeakable [\u2026] There is no precision, no originality, no perfection.\u201d Where Reasons End<\/em> is an attempt at finding a language for the unspeakable. <\/p>\n

Early on, the mother states that she is \u201ca generic parent grieving a generic child lost to an inexplicable tragedy.\u201d This is as grand a statement made in this quiet book, but still, the narrator feels the need to unpack each \u201cclich\u00e9\u201d in it, going on to define \u201cgrieve,\u201d \u201cexplicate\u201d and \u201ctragedy\u201d:<\/p>\n

            Grieve: from Latin gravare<\/em>, to burden, and gravis<\/em>, grave, heavy.
\n            What kind of mother would consider it a burden to live in the vacancy
\n            left by a child? Explicate: from Latin ex<\/em> (out) + plicare<\/em> (fold), to unfold. But
\n            calling Nikolai\u2019s action inexplicable was like calling a migrant bird ending
\n            on a new continent lost. Who can say the vagrant doesn\u2019t have a reason
\n            to change the course of its flight? Nothing inexplicable for me\u2014only I didn\u2019t
\n            want to explain: A mother\u2019s job is to enfold not unfold.<\/p>\n

Here we see the two ways that language works in the novel. On one hand, there is a scientific desire to name and define; the narrator repeatedly turns to the dictionary in a search for meaning. When no stable meaning is found in certain words \u2014\u201csuffering, I thought, was a word that no longer held a definition in my dictionary\u201d\u2014 Li gives flight to more poetic images, to birds, to trees.<\/p>\n

The novel takes its name from Elizabeth Bishop\u2019s poem, ‘Arguments’. In the first stanza of the poem, Bishop writes \u201cargue argue argue with me \/ endlessly \/ neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.\u201d The novel is structured as a dialogue between a mother and her dead teenage son (split up into 16 chapters), but I would say this dialogue is, in Bishop\u2019s sense of the word, more of an argument.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t argue about serious things \u2014why he took his life say\u2014 but they do argue in a way a ‘generic’ child and a mother might, about unimportant things. The conversation is intellectual, they argue about nouns and adjectives, talk about Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. Nikolai is precocious, quick-witted, and pitted against his weary mother, he wins every argument. The conversation-structure of the novel reminded me of Plato\u2019s Dialogues<\/em>, in which he imagines (or remembers) the words of his dead teacher Socrates. Nikolai is a modern-day mock-Socrates, and maybe, like Plato, Li gives life to him in words so that everyone can see his ideas and witness his cleverness, despite his death.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat pompous nonsense,\u201d Nikolai says if ever his mother starts to sound profound. \u201cI hate it when you try to sound smart.\u201d When I heard about the suicide of Li\u2019s 16 year old son in 2017, and that she was writing a novel about it, the last thing I thought it would be was funny. To \u201cmany people [Nikolai has] become a fact. Hard to accept. Impossible to understand.\u201d But to his mother, he is still somewhat alive, a smart, laughing ghost. <\/p>\n

It is strange to say in a book review, but almost the entire novel takes place in words, or as the mother puts it, \u201cin this world of ours, made by words.\u201d There is little action; we spend the novel suspended in dialogue. Once in a while, the mother talks about the changing seasons outside, the tree through her window\u2014 perhaps calling back to another Bishop poem, ‘To a Tree’, written when Bishop was 16. Nikolai was a poet before he died, and his mother is a writer, so perhaps it is obvious that they would \u201clook for some depth in words when [they] can\u2019t find it in the three-dimensional world.\u201d <\/p>\n

The \u201cworld of words\u201d in Where Reasons End<\/em> is small\u2014 Li\u2019s semantic field is a cramped room. The narrator continually notes that her \u201cdictionary is limited.\u201d The effect of this limitation is that certain words are repeated throughout the novel, and with each repetition, they gain meaning, they roll on, growing, like a ball of snow down a hill. \u201cEvery time [Nikolai says] something [the narrator has] to turn to the dictionary\u201d\u2014 words to her are \u201cpregnant with meanings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The novel seems to be a reaction against the notion that words fail to express the severity of certain situations. This failure of expression is what Brian Eno, in his book A Year With Swollen Appendices<\/em>, called: <\/p>\n

            the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits
\n            and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something
\n            too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the
\n            cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat
\n            that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white,
\n            is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned
\n            to record them.<\/p>\n

Li pushes the medium of language to its limits to contain the emotional nuances of a parent grieving their child\u2019s suicide. In clear and precise prose, I think she gets as close as you can get, but there are still hints of that \u201ccracked voice\u201d, of language just not being enough. In the mother\u2019s words, as she \u201cimagine[s] writing a letter of condolence\u201d: \u201cI know my words are not enough to express my devastation at your loss and my words will not do much to alleviate your pain, but these words are all I have.\u201d <\/p>\n

by Gurnaik Johal<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yiyun Li | Where Reasons End | Penguin Books: \u00a312.99 Whether writing wedding vows or eulogies, there are certain things that we struggle to express in words. \u201cYou always say words fall short,\u201d says Nikolai, the 16 year old son of the narrator in Yiyun Li\u2019s latest novel, Where Reasons End. He is speaking to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nYiyun Li | Where Reasons End | reviewed by Gurnaik Johal - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10372\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yiyun Li | Where Reasons End | reviewed by Gurnaik Johal - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yiyun Li | Where Reasons End | Penguin Books: \u00a312.99 Whether writing wedding vows or eulogies, there are certain things that we struggle to express in words. \u201cYou always say words fall short,\u201d says Nikolai, the 16 year old son of the narrator in Yiyun Li\u2019s latest novel, Where Reasons End. 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