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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