“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (MAR 21, 2014)

“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.” For four friends, that line was crossed during their late teenage years, when one of them was poisoned, perhaps deliberately, perhaps accidentally, lingering in a physical limbo state until she finally dies years later.  The young man, Boyang, remains in China; the two young women, Ruyu and Moran, move to the United States. Each ends up living in what the author describes as a “life-long quarantine against love and life.”

Kinder than Solitude is not primarily a mystery of a poisoned woman nor is it an “immigrant experience” book, although it is being hailed as both. Rather, it’s a deep and insightful exploration about the human condition – how one’s past can affect one’s future, how innocence can be easily lost, and how challenging it is to get in touch with – let alone salvage – one’s better self.

“To have an identity – to be known – required one to possess an ego, yet so much more, too: a collection of people, a traceable track lining one place to another – all these had to be added to that ego or one to have any kind of identity,” Yiyun Li writes.

In the case of Moran, who married and divorced an older man she still cares for, what she called her life “…was only a way of not living, and by doing that, she had taken, here and there, parts of other people’s lives and turned them into nothing along with her own.” Riyu, the most enigmatic and detached of the characters, is an empty vessel, unable to connect or to experience much pleasure or pain, who strives to receive an “exemption from participating in life.” And Boyang, a successful entrepreneur with a cynical sense of the world, has discovered that “love measured by effort was the only love within his capacity.”

This is a deeply philosophical book, one that delves into its characters, with an ambling narrative that shifts from the shared Chinese past to the present –China, San Francisco, the Midwest. It is not for everyone – certainly not for readers who are anticipating an action-packed, page-turning suspense novel. But for those who seek insights into the human condition and love strong character-based novels, Kinder Than Solitude offers rich rewards.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 16 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (February 25, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Yiyun Li
EXTRAS:	Q&A and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Pen/O’Henry Prize Stories 2010 edited by Laura Furman

Bibliography:

• A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories (2005)
• The Vagrants (2009)
• Gold Boy, Emerald Girl: Stories (2010)
• Kinder Than Solitude (February 2014)

“The men crouch low, and with their gloved hands, as best they can, they clear the mud from the body.  But it is not a body, not really; it is only a heap of bones inside the remains of a uniform.  Nothing is left of the flesh, only a few black-brown remnants clinging to the side of the skull.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (FEB 2, 2014)

One of the aspects of this impressive debut by Anna Hope that makes me raise my hat is the effectiveness with which she handles its secondary thread. In italics interspersing the main story a page or two at a time, are little vignettes as British officials exhume the body of an unidentified soldier from the battlefields of Northern France, prepare it for a new coffin, and take it with due solemnity to its final resting place in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey. The vignettes, and the story that they enfold, span a five-day period leading up to November 11, 1920, the second anniversary of the Armistice. The First World War is over, but what has become of the survivors?

Each of the vignettes contains an anonymous figure — from a soldier assisting with the disinterment to a war widow bringing her child to watch the procession — real and dimensioned enough for the reader to feel for them, even as the camera moves on. They are emblems of countless stories that might be developed in their millions all over the country, although Hope has chosen to focus on only three. Three women, all coping with loss, all seeking a way to move forward. There is Hettie, a dance hostess at the Hammersmith Palais, whose brother has returned sound in body but damaged in his mind; she is looking for her life to begin, but the normal patterns have all been disrupted. There is Ada, a mother in her forties, the loss of whose son Michael has caused an estrangement between her and her husband. Unlike other parents, they have no information about their son’s resting place; is it possible the Unknown Soldier might be Michael himself? And there is Evelyn, an upper-class girl who has tried to bury herself in a munitions factory and then in a government office after the death of her boyfriend; for five years now, she has not permitted herself to love, and hardly even to live.

Hope juggles the three stories freely in short episodes spread over the five days. She also sketches some connections between them. Evelyn’s brother, for instance, a captain in the army who has come back with his own problems, turns out to have connections with both Hettie and Ada’s son Michael. There were times, I admit, when I was conscious of almost a romance-novel artifice in the writing. But no sooner would I register this than something would come along that was truly fine. To give but one example, there is a scene when Ada goes to consult a medium to find out about Michael. Historically, it is apt; the First World War brought a huge revival of interest in spiritualism. But Ada’s meeting with the medium turns out to be something else entirely, totally human and deeply moving.

This is a novel that is perfectly titled. Wake, as in the wake of a ship, or turbulent aftermath of some great passing. Wake, as in the ritual for the dead. And Wake, as in to awaken from sleep and dreams. All perfectly realized in this deceptively unpretentious novel. As always, I thought of a number of other books while I was reading. I almost immediately put aside the obvious comparison to Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series; Anna Hope has more penetrating ambitions. I certainly thought a lot about Sarah Waters’  The Night Watch, another rich exploration of the lives of women, this time in the shadow of the Second World War. But the comparison that increasingly stuck with me was of a different order entirely: to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. And that is a high compliment.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House (February 11, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Anna Hope
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Soldier’s Wife by Margaret Leroy

Bibliography:

• Wake (February 2013)