Book Review: Where Reasons End

Told from the perspective of Yiyun Li herself, Where Reasons End is less a novel and more an imagined conversation—between forever 16-year-old Nikolai and his grieving mother—exploring loss, motherhood, and the choices we make with our lives. Li realizes what she’s doing as she writes, saying “We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by words.”

It would be impossible to construct a boy purely out of words—no physicality, no line between what is spoken and what is thought—if the author didn’t have such a masterful control over her medium. Li rips apart the way we view the English language, questioning how we communicate, forcing the reader to ask themselves, what is the purpose of a noun and is there any adjective that is actually worthwhile? Li claims she has no understanding of poetry, and yet she masterfully picks apart her own metaphors and questions each word choice, proving with exactitude how our language fails us.

Each chapter is packed with existential discussion—why we live, how we live, what is important in our lives—and I definitely had to reread segments to fully understand what Nikolai and his mother were debating. There was a bit of emotional whiplash while listening in on their conversation, as their perspectives so often countered each other. The narrator would say something existential-crisis-inducing and Nikolai would immediately shut that thought down, drawing both the reader and his mother away from the easy option of romanticizing and rationalizing.

Honestly it was hard to finish this book despite how short it was. The book feels deeply personal, as it was written in the months after the death of the author’s son and is very self-referential. This, along with everything else, requires a certain amount of emotional and mental investment, which in the end I think was worth it.

My review? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🌟/5