The award-winning author behind Where Reasons End returns with her anticipated new novel, Must I Go.
Yiyun Liis reflected on the tragic moment in her life when her cockapoo, Quintus, starts barking loudly.
Im sorry about that dog!
Credit: Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty Images; Random House
she says with a boisterous laugh, then a soft smile.
This is the embarrassing part about Zooming, right?
As shes learned, its just the way life works sometimes.
The best-selling writer Elizabeth McCracken called the book about the saddest thing in the world.
But Li, 47, a published author for more than a decade, sees things differently.
Even just writing it in the most dire moment, I laughed often.
Pause for the barking cockapoo.
Its probably the funniest book Ive written, about the saddest thing in my life.
Her latest,Must I Go, is primed to vault her into the spotlight.
Their interspersing narrations tell dueling stories of fizzling romances, California history, and personal revelation.
Older people are in general interesting to me because they forget things, Li cracks.
Lilias personal history overlaps with American history postWorld War II.
She has a lot in common with American history, how its built.
Lis shift toward that kind of novelistic sweep doesnt mean shes sacrificed her dry humor or keen insight.
Indeed,Must I Gohas had its own complicated journey.
The writing of it was interrupted by life, Li notes in the acknowledgments.
Lis son died shortly thereafter, when she was 44 years old.
That was an uncanny coincidence, Li says.
I stopped writing the novel at that time.
I thought, What did I do before this happened?
Was I writing to prepare myself?
Its almost like I had a personal contest with Lilia, she explains.
Pushing her to say a few things more, pushing her so I could understand her.
As Li realized after writing that book, there was a lot of unresolved business.
Booksare core to Lis being.
Currently, shes reading about 10 books simultaneously each in 15-page increments a day.
Reading is the structure of my life, she says.
Theycry and calls each of her books a record of my life at a time.
She considers her work in conversation with her literary heroes, like Leo Tolstoy or William Trevor.
She asserts emotion in prose: Sharpening the feeling, the thought.
Writing, to me, is constantly saying, This sentence is not close enough.
A gardener appears outside; the cockapoo is back at it.
Of course, hes excited!
What a writer can do [is say], Let me see if I can do better.
Thats what is in my control.
She smirks, realizing shes contradicting herself.
I guess Im writing with more freedom now.
