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My God, this one made me
sad.
“Where Reasons End” is a
string of fictional dialogues
between a mother and Nikolai,
her
deceased
son.
Nikolai
committed suicide. Yiyun Li
writes about trauma with an
eloquence so intimate that her
words read as her truth, and I
had to look her up. She wrote
the
novel
in
the
months
following
the
passing of her
own son.
I
want
everyone
to
read
this
book.
It’s
experimental
in its effortless
lack
of
linearity,
but
it reads with a
heaviness that
sinks
like
a
brick. I never
want
to
read
it again, but I
always want to
have it close by.
Forever,
always,
never,
Li
cycles
through these abstractions over
and over. I do the same, we all
do, until our feet cement in
some hapless form of ever.
“The unspeakable is a wound
that stays open always, always,
and forever … I will be sad today
and tomorrow, a week from now,
a year from now. I will be sad
forever.”
There’s
a
sickness
in
the
notion
of
forever,
a
masturbatory
kind
of
self-
indulgence in thinking you can
hold a person in your hands
indefinitely.
Reeling
from
the pain of a loss can be so
intense that it become easier
to choose to feel nothing at all.
Li has filled what would be the
heaviest kind of nothingness
with words. She accepts her
feelings as they come. Death is
impossible, indisputable, and Li
deals with it.
Time wasn’t made for us to
touch, but Li knows better. She
doesn’t dare toy with tomorrow;
instead, she strangles a fever
dream out of today.
“A self is timeless,” Li writes.
“Tenseless.”
And I can see it. I see her
time, hear it screeching, watch
as
it
evaporates
altogether.
Her language is so entrenched
in time’s failure to pass, and
what results is a white-knuckle
kind of clinging to grief that’s
expressed
as
honestly
and
genuinely as anyone can.
“What if, having lived through
a dark and bleak time, a parent
can convince a child that what
we need is not a light that will
lead us somewhere, but the
resolution to be nowhere, even if
it’s ever and forever.”
I don’t know what it means to
live fully, or to live well, even.
Life is delicate and unbearably
breakable, and maybe it’s just
a
series
of
resolutions:
an
acceptance of the time we are
given, be it boundless or not.
Light doesn’t always have to be
burning or fading. Sometimes it
just needs to be on.
Nikolai’s mother asks him:
“Life is imperfect, but it does
mean something, no?”
Choosing to believe life does,
in fact, mean something, is a
hope-laden resolve. Life isn’t
perfect, but it’s enough.
In one of the novel’s more
overtly harrowing epicenters,
our narrator recounts showing
Nikolai a particular line from
“Sense and Sensibility,” that “to
wish was to hope, to hope was to
expect.” Nikolai tasked himself
with the hope to be perfect,
and this hope translated into
a searing belief that unless he
could be, he had nothing left to
live for. “Where
Reasons
End”
is
a
mother’s
grief over such a
dire translation:
“Who,
my
dear child, has
taken the word
lovable
out
of
your
dictionary
and
mine,
and
replaced it with
perfect?”
What happens
to Nikolai isn’t
tragic
—
it’s
sad. This book
is
sad,
these
conversations
are sad. Li has
created a life in
this book from
Nikolai’s
words
that’s
opaque
and grossly adversary to the
fluidity of what it means to live.
She grips time, treats death
like taffy, and it’s not right or
wrong. It just is.
Nikolai
was
too
fast
to
taste his own freedom. The
mother in this novel describes
someone who dies as having
the “privilege” of not being
left behind — a sentiment so
blunt it nearly broke me, as
did many of Li’s words. Life is
hard. What we’re doing here
is so very hard. Unless there’s
peace nestled inside the rubble
of each moment, the days start
to hollow themselves out.
The novel is aptly titled,
because the dialogues that fill
this narrative don’t happen
so much as they simply are,
like time is, life is, death is:
reasonless, but present. Always.
‘Where Reasons End’ is an
indispensable look at grief
BOOK REVIEW
‘Where Reasons End’
Yiyun Li
Feb. 5, 2019
It wasn’t so long ago that death felt like
riskiest,
most
consequential
choice
TV
writers could make. What better way to
upend a story, discombobulate an audience
and stir up some water-cooler chatter than
the grisly, shocking, teary slaughter of a
beloved character? But two things are making
that less and less true. First, this is an age
of experimental television, where every
narrative convention we take for granted
is duly ignored. And secondly, everyone
watching seems to be mired in a comfortable
sort of nihilism, resigned to spend the rest
of eternity in the service of Jeff Bezos while
the Floridian peninsula sinks into a rapidly
acidifying ocean. It makes mortality feel
almost quaint. Dying, schmying — we have
bigger fish to fry (though, you know, those
falling pH levels are already doing that).
If we’re all doomed to shuffle off this mortal
coil eventually, shows like NBC’s “The Good
Place” and Amazon’s “Forever” ask, why not
use death as an opportunity to re-examine
the lives we’ve been living? “Russian Doll,”
Netflix’s cool, caustic, fabulous new entry in
the death-com genre, gamifies the concept,
hinging its stakes on the
journey of self-discovery.
Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha
Lyonne, “Orange is the New
Black”),
a
curmudgeonly
video game designer, wakes
up on the night of her 36th
birthday in her friend’s outré
East Village bathroom after
being fatally hit by a cab.
And again, after tumbling
down the stairs. And again
after falling into a basement
grate on the sidewalk. “The
universe is trying to fuck with
me,” she snarls. “And I refuse
to engage!” It’s a premise
probably forever associated
with “Groundhog Day”: What
would you do if you were
stuck indefinitely in a time
loop?
Learn
French?
Try
your hand at ice sculpting?
Attempt to win the heart of
Andie MacDowell? (Come on,
we’d all attempt to win the
heart of Andie MacDowell.)
“Russian Doll” knows it’s
treading on iconic ground.
Nadia’s loops all begin with
the same infectious Harry
Nilsson song — a nod to the
clock radio blaring “I Got
You Babe” that woke Bill
Murray’s Phil Connors in each of his loops.
But Nadia attacks her situation with a fierce
sort of logic that the movie’s misanthropic
meteorologist never did. She’s a programmer,
after all. Surely, she reasons, this is some kind
of bug in life’s code. Was it the drugs she took
that night? Could her friend’s apartment be
haunted?
The
answer
is
more
complicated
than
Nadia
would like it to be. Fixing
this bug will take unpacking
years of repressed trauma
and peeling back the layers of
her life, much like the titular
nested
matryoshka
doll.
Luckily, as an early-season
plot twist reveals, she won’t
have to go at it alone.
The New York of “Russian
Doll” is seamy, grungy, a
little Lynchian. But it’s also
familiar and brightly-peopled
—
like
a
cross
between
“Mr. Robot” and “Can You
Ever
Forgive
Me?”
Each
supporting character — whom
we come to know a little
differently in each reboot — is
affectionately drawn, quirky,
but always warm. Lyonne
herself is a standout.
It’s a gem of a show that
can do what it does in a
wonderfully tidy half-hour
format, one a few other shows
could stand to adopt. The
compactness leaves “Russian
Doll” feeling so well-paced
and densely-plotted that it’s
probably worth a re-watch
or two to soak in every last
detail. Now there’s a never-ending loop I
wouldn’t mind being stuck in.
Netflix’s ‘Russian Doll’ is
just clever, charming and
loopy enough to be iconic
TV REVIEW
NETFLIX
‘Russian Doll’
Season One
Netflix
Streaming Now
Dying, schmying
— we have
bigger fish to
fry (though, you
know, those
falling pH levels
are already
doing that).
MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN
Daily Arts Wrtier
ARYA NAIDU
Managing Arts Editor
By Andy Morrison
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/08/19
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/08/19
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Friday, February 8, 2019
ACROSS
1 Yukon supplier
4 __ pants
9 Scorned lover of
Jason
14 Aptly, it rhymes
with “spa”
15 CNN
correspondent
Hill
16 Big period
17 TV trailblazer
18 Boxing
academy?
20 Loud noises
22 “There, there,”
e.g.
23 One at the top of
the order
26 Whirling
30 Optimist’s hopeful
list?
33 “Othello” role
34 Pamphlet ending
35 Have __ for
36 Colorful bird
37 Literal and
figurative hint
to four puzzle
answers
41 Field supervisor
43 Sword-and-
sandal feature,
e.g.
44 Turkish title
47 Award using
spelled-out
initials
48 Wild party in
Dallas?
51 Wednesday, to
be exact
53 Souvenirs
54 Plays ball
57 Musical
collaboration
instruction
58 Literary alliance?
63 A, in Aachen
64 Senate staffers
65 Coke or Pepsi
66 Young Darth’s
nickname
67 Bright
68 Hindu mystics
69 Ballet composer
Delibes
DOWN
1 Refuse
2 Poe genre
3 Title servant in
a 1946 Paulette
Goddard film
4 Mag mogul
5 Home of the
2001 World
Series champs,
on scoreboards
6 Eighteen-
wheelers
7 Call back?
8 Only deaf
performer to win
an Oscar
9 Waikiki, to
surfers
10 Recipient of a
New Testament
epistle attributed
to Saint Paul
11 __-wop
12 Prefix with
conscious
13 Calder Cup org.
19 Without
21 Vast expanse
24 Tuck away
25 1974 CIA spoof
27 Discounted
combo
28 Supermarket
chain
29 “__ is the
winter of our
discontent”:
Shak.
31 Luau ring
32 Architect’s
addition
36 Start to manage?
38 Summer
refresher
39 College
admissions fig.
40 Document with
bullets
41 Cousin of org
42 Band of Tokyo?
45 Sincere
46 Hall of fame
48 Puerto Rico, e.g.:
Abbr.
49 Barely makes it
50 Handle
preceder
52 Discharge
55 Iberian river
56 Metallic waste
58 Lived
59 Basket border
60 Early civil rights
activist __ B.
Wells
61 Covert maritime
gp.
62 Cred. union
offerings
6 — Friday, February 8 , 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NETFLIX