Where Reasons End — Yiyun Li

A fearless writer confronts grief and transforms it into art, in a book of surprising beauty and love.

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.