Wow! What an intense and heartbreaking story.

I picked this one up sort of randomly, for research I was doing. It was completely different from what I was expecting to read, and I definitely felt the weight of everything that was said.

There are a lot of TRIGGER WARNINGS in this book.

Mostly: suicide, depression, death, murder etc.

I will say I loved Yiyun’s writing, the way she was able to make me feel, question, and understand my own thoughts at certain times felt wild to me. I’ll definitely be reading another book from her.

Quotes:

To exist as fully as the world expects one to, yet to remain absent inwardly: not equipped with words to articulate the secret I nevertheless understood it at a formative age.

Sometimes I suspect that I am drawn to those who don’t converse with me because I have not outgrown a childish wish that they will teach me how to live.

How could you have thought of suicide when you have people you love? How could you have forgotten those who love you? These questions were asked, again and again. But love is the wrong thing to question. One does not will oneself to love; one does not kill oneself because one ceases to love. The difficulty is that love erases: the more faded one becomes, the more easily one loves. My muddle, in retrospect, is clear: I had underestimated my aversion to wanting anything; I had overestimated my capacity to want nothing.

One’s grief belongs to oneself; one’s tragedy, to others.