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Where Reasons End

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About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li.

'Days: the easiest possession. The days he had refused would come, one at a time. They would wait, every daybreak, with their boundless patience and indifference, seeing if they could turn me into a friend or an enemy to myself.'

A woman's teenage son takes his own life. It is incomprehensible. The woman is a writer, and so she attempts to comprehend her grief in the space she knows best: on the page, as an imagined conversation with the child she has lost. He is as sharp and funny and serious in death as he was in life, and he will speak back to her, unable to offer explanation or solace, but not yet, not quite, gone.

Taking the form of a dialogue between mother and son, Where Reasons End is an extraordinary portrait of parenthood, in all its painful contradictions of joy, humour and sorrow, and of what it is to lose a child.

 Biographical Fiction Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Women's Fiction Biography

Critic reviews

an incredible piece of work
a disquieting, delicate, affecting book
One of the most moving books I've ever read.
Profoundly moving. An astonishing book, a true work of art.
The writing is raw and deeply affecting.
Heart-rending
Li writes with a shimmering and deeply felt precision.
Unsentimental, brave and beautiful. An absolutely monumental book.
The most intelligent, insightful, heart-wrenching book of our time. (Andrew Sean Greer)
A masterpiece. This book haunts me more than any other novel I've read in recent years. (Garth Greenwell)
All stars
Most relevant
Yiyun Li's wisdom overwhelmes the reader. This thin book is much more than a little novel. It has more wisdom than hundreds of pages of the greatest philosophers. She demonstrates an uncanny insight into the raw essence of being human. It is an easy read, but a thought provoking and uneasy experience.

Daring. Alive. Poignant. Raw.

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This book destroyed and rebuilt me! I can't stop recommending it. Heartbreakingly beautiful, moving, and expertly crafted

Devestating

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