22 Jun / Must I Go by Yiyun Li [in Booklist]
Missing children loom in Yiyun Li’s latest novel, her second since her teenage son’s tragic 2017 suicide, which inspired Where Reasons End (2019). MacArthur “genius” Li is herself a suicide survivor, as revealed in Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life (2017).
In her first title with a non-Asian-specific cast (as if creating some semblance of distance), an adult child’s suicide propels a multi-level narrative that sprawls through relationships, perspectives, and responses. Octogenarian Lilia takes center stage: she has buried three husbands, had five children, and claims 17 grandchildren. She’s never quite understood her firstborn Lucy’s suicide at 27, abandoning her two-month-old daughter, Katherine. Decades later, only Katherine is “essential to Lilia for as long as she lived.”
When Lilia discovers the posthumously published diary of Roland Bouley, the peripatetic philanderer with whom Lilia had a brief affair at 16, resulting in Lucy’s birth, she claims her own story, penning annotations alongside his tiresome posturing, intending to leave an emboldening legacy for Katherine and Katherine’s young daughter, Iola. Once more, Li confronts unbearable grief and claims agency.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, June 1, 2020
Readers: Adult
Published: 2020