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In this stunning, introspective novel of loneliness and detachment, two women--Moran, and Ruyu, and one man, Boyang-- are illuminated in the months before and the decades after a tragedy. As teenagers, they banded together in their communal Beijing neighborhood. Shaoai, an outspoken dissident of the Chinese government, was poisoned, apparently an accident, in the shadow of the Tiananmen Square protests. She takes twenty years to die, although the massive deterioration begins early. Soon after th...
Reading this through to the end was a chore. The three friends at the core of the book are the same remote, unlikable character in different guises. The plot is dull and the "twist" at the root of what may or may not be a murder is implausible. The ending is entirely inadequate. I regret every hour I spent on this and only wish I'd given it up at the start.
This is a poignant book that revolves around three friends and an event - the poisoning of another friend - that changes their lives forever. It hops back in time between their childhood and the present (twenty years later), to see what sort of lives they live, and how much they are effected by the past. I cared deeply about all the characters, but this is a sad tale of mourning, loss, and broken dreams and to be honest, I felt quite depressed, even after finishing it, a little haunted.Superbly
Library - Overdrive ebook. I went in blind. I had no expectation. Great surprise discovery. This is the first book I’ve read by Yiyun Li. I’m completely stoked!!!!Her writing intrigued me. On almost every page there were excerpts I wanted to highlight. Eventually - I made myself stop analyzing every sentence - stopped the highlighting- and just snuggled under my comforter and read for the PURISTS PLEASURE. I'd gladly read this book again. - hell - I just want more soup bowls that Yiyun Li is dis...
“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.”For four friends, that line was crossed during their late teenage years, when one of them was poisoned, perhaps deliberately, perhaps accidentally, lingering in a physical limbo state until she finally dies years later The young man, Boyang, remains in China; the two young women, Ruyu and Mo...
Set partly in China shortly after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, partly in Beijing and America around twenty years later, 'Kinder than Solitude' tells the story of three friends and their slow withdrawal into a self-imposed emotional isolation after their lives are irreversibly altered by an event, that may or may not have been an attempted murder.The catalyst of the story is Ruyu. Orphaned as a child and raised by two deeply religious 'great aunts', she is sent to Beijing to live with r...
Let me start with the good. Thanks to Goodreads for sending me this book in a giveaway. It's fun to be a winner. I had never heard of Yiyun Li. She has written a couple of other books and seems like she has a following of people that enjoy her novels. She has a real easy writing style that flows along as you read it. Just as a writer, I would say she has talent.The problem is what the book jacket led me to believe is the story. "A profound mystery is at the heart of this magnificent new novel" i...
The best epithet for this book would be "pensive".Before she met Josef, she had been in Madison for two and a half months, but those days, like the time since she had left Josef, had been willfully turned into the footprints of seabirds on wet sand, existing only between the flow and ebb of the tide.(see what I mean? somehow this ostensibly simple passage is my favorite in the whole book, along with this one, where it is not about the wording but about the feeling: To be brought to an understand...
OH MY GOD. Yiyun Li. The legend. The icon. SHE IS INCREDIBLE. Every book I read by her is my fave fave fave. I can't wait to read The Vagrants. There were sentences every PARAGRAPH of this book where I had to pause and set the book down and reconsider my life. The ending was a little underwhelming for me but like......this book just lives on and on and on past its ending. This was so painful. So good. Just wow!!!
This poignant novel looks at the relationship between three friends and an event which has shaped their lives. The book begins with Boyang, a ‘diamond’ bachelor at thirty seven; with a good income and spacious housing in crowded Beijing, he is divorced with no children. When we meet him, he is arranging the cremation of Shaoai, who was poisoned twenty one years ago and has finally died after years of illness and suffering. On the death of Shaoai, he sends an email to his two childhood friends –
Amazing prose. The author digs deep for emotional twists and truth."You can't both live and have lived, my dear Christophe." - Romain Rolland, Jean-Christophe Boyang had thought grief would make people less commonplace.These people forget that those who rush to every sweet fruit of life, rush to death, too."Good that things come to an end."Cypresses and pine trees - symbols of everlasting youth (at a cemetery)Loyalty to the past is the foundation of a life one does not, by happenstance or by
My thoughts about this book are not firm....In 1989 childhood friends Boyang and Moran welcome 15-year-old Ruyu and her accordion into their world of school and bicycle rides throughout the province of Beijing. Ruyu will stay as a paid guest in the home of Shaoai---a 22 year old university student---and Shaoai’s parents and bedridden grandfather. Orphaned at birth and raised by two Catholic grandaunts, Ruyu is not interested in friendship but sees her move to Beijing as part of the destiny which...
