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Where Reasons End

A Novel

Yiyun Li

Ages 16+

Readers rate it 3.8 (28 on Hardcover)

193 pages · Released Feb 5, 2019

Content report card

Where Reasons End parent’s guide: what’s inside

High confidence

Language

Sexual content

LGBTQ+ themes

Substance use

What it offers

Educational value

A note for parents

This is a profound literary novel about grief following a child's suicide, written as imagined conversations between a mother and her deceased son. It is not a children's or young adult book—it explores adult themes of loss, depression, and parental anguish with emotional intensity. While the writing is beautiful and the work is ultimately about love and connection, the subject matter and emotional weight make it appropriate only for mature teens and adults who can engage with such heavy material.

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From the publisher

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 • LO... 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.

Shelved under

  • Fiction
  • American literature
  • Fiction, biographical
  • New York Times reviewed
  • Mothers and sons
  • Grief
  • FICTION / Family Life
  • FICTION / Literary
  • FICTION / Women
  • FICTION / Family Life / General

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ISBN 9781984817389 · Random House

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