Reviews

Must I Go by Yiyun Li

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ladyeremite's review against another edition

3.0

2.5. This book is undeniably well-written, and Lilia's character is wonderfully developed - her own voice full of delightful pearls of wisdom. The epistolary format, and the way in which both Lilia and Roland did and did not belong in the lives of those they found important was really beautiful.

But god. Roland Bouley. The worst. Ugh. A very believable character, but man, what a waste of space. And I guess that was kind of the point - that a woman as interesting as Lilia who had definitely known better men -and knew she had known them - still spent much of her time fixated on this vacuous idiot. But did she really need to bring the reader along with her?

emilyinparis's review against another edition

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That was one of those days when Lilia wouldn’t mind playing truant from life. Coffee lukewarm from breakfast’

‘When you’re closer to death, you don’t need much of an excuse to play at being alive again’

‘The days after love are long and empty. It’s up to you and me to make them less so. The others, they are of no use to us’

‘Enough people had died on Lilia. But they were more or less in the right order, and the pains they left were the tolerable kind, losing their sharp edges with each month and each year passing’

‘“Who needs poetry?” Lilia had too much life in her to be contained by rhymes and rhythm, pauses and stops’

‘Lilia liked how he talked, chewing hard on each word, too greedy to give them away lightly’

‘But Hetty and I, two old people living in our young shells, will let routine carry us. I am suffering from the internal bleeding caused by despair. Hetty, the anaemia caused by love’

‘Love is like a savings account. You make a deposit, and use it here and there, sometimes subtracting an amount when you least expect it. You can say there is interest but there’s not much to speak of’

‘He wore his lies like tailored suits. And who could begrudge a man looking so dapper in his lies?’

‘To experience something that has long been known to me through words—oddly the effect is diluted’

‘A missing year is nothing. Everyone’s life is like Swiss cheese’

‘The war drags on like a half-hearted engagement, with no reason to dissolve and no wedding in sight’

‘The women holding my future hostage are those who could easily treat me as a nonentity’

‘What are the mathematics that determine how fast a person is forgotten?’

‘I wish she had gone with someone I knew. A new name, workout a face attached, crushes one with its unfamiliarity’

‘The truly lonely one is this fool here, waiting for the clock to strike ten so I can pretend that I have had a fine evening of reading and then join my wife in our unruffled marriage bed’

‘I have not been a widower. That remains an unswum river, an untasted wine, an unmapped terrain, an unmet lover’

‘You can live a long life, surrounded by people, but you’ll be darn lucky if one or two of them can take you as you are, not who you are to them’

‘I haven’t stopped arguing with Lucy for thirty-seven years. The children I’ve raised, the husbands I’ve seen die in their beds, my gardens, my reading Roland’s diary— everything in my life is part of that long argument with Lucy. She was my daughter. She shouldn’t have quit so easily’

‘It alarmed me, it touched me, it made me want to announce my love for her like a young man when our thoughts, coming from two directions, merged at the thought of a spring fox’