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A review by smalefowles
Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li
4.0
I'm not entirely sure I liked this book, but I respect this book.
It's very well-written, though in a type of omniscient narrator idiom that I don't encounter often. It's a very knowing narrator, full of bleak aphorisms. This fits the characters well, since the three central protagonists are all disconnected from themselves and their lives. Someone has to be able to describe their interiority, and it's not them.
The plot hinges on a mystery, sort of, but it's really just a tale of how lives can be lived. It's easy to see these characters as ciphers, and less comfortable to consider how we might be a little cold and heartless ourselves (Oh, just me? Oh, okay).
Though I didn't precisely enjoy the book, I'm going to get another by the same author, as I find her style intriguing, and would like to see what her other books sound like. (Oh curse my fallible memory, I apparently have already read another book, and found it similarly inexplicable yet unenjoyable. Third time's the charm?)
It's very well-written, though in a type of omniscient narrator idiom that I don't encounter often. It's a very knowing narrator, full of bleak aphorisms. This fits the characters well, since the three central protagonists are all disconnected from themselves and their lives. Someone has to be able to describe their interiority, and it's not them.
The plot hinges on a mystery, sort of, but it's really just a tale of how lives can be lived. It's easy to see these characters as ciphers, and less comfortable to consider how we might be a little cold and heartless ourselves (Oh, just me? Oh, okay).
Though I didn't precisely enjoy the book, I'm going to get another by the same author, as I find her style intriguing, and would like to see what her other books sound like. (Oh curse my fallible memory, I apparently have already read another book, and found it similarly inexplicable yet unenjoyable. Third time's the charm?)