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Must I Go
Lilia Liska has shrewdly outlived three husbands, raised five children, and seen the arrival of seventeen grandchildren. Now she has turned her keen attention to the diary of a long-forgotten man named Roland Bouley, with whom she once had a fleeting affair.
Increasingly obsessed with Roland's intimate history, Lilia begins to annotate the diary with her own rather different version of events, revealing the surprising, long-held secrets of her past. She returns inexorably to the memory of her daughter Lucy. This is a novel about life in all its messy glory, and of a life lived, by the extraordinary Lilia, absolutely on its own terms. With great candor and insight, Yiyun Li navigates the twin poles of grief and resilience, loss and rebirth, that compass a human heart.
Increasingly obsessed with Roland's intimate history, Lilia begins to annotate the diary with her own rather different version of events, revealing the surprising, long-held secrets of her past. She returns inexorably to the memory of her daughter Lucy. This is a novel about life in all its messy glory, and of a life lived, by the extraordinary Lilia, absolutely on its own terms. With great candor and insight, Yiyun Li navigates the twin poles of grief and resilience, loss and rebirth, that compass a human heart.
368 pages, Paperback
First published July 28, 2020
394 people are currently reading
14532 people want to read
About the author
Yiyun Li
59 books1,716 followersYiyun Li is the author of seven books, including Where Reasons End, which received the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; the essay collection Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life; and the novels The Vagrants and Must I Go. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Windham-Campbell Prize, among other honors. A contributing editor to A Public Space, she teaches at Princeton University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 377 reviews
July 2, 2020
Lilia knew about children:
“They start out warm and pure like a bucket of fresh milk, but sooner or later they turned sour”.
Lilia was 81 years old age.....the oldest of six children, five of whom she raised herself.
She had seventeen grandchildren.
Lilia also outlived 3 husbands:
“Some women specialized in marrying the wrong people. Lilia had not been one of them. But all of these husbands were gone, the memory of their large hearts and small vices no more than the vanilla pudding at dinner: low-calorie, no sugar, with barely enough flavor”.
Lilia had an affair with an older man, Roland Bouley, starting when she was only 16 years old.
“Lilia remembered sitting in a hotel room in San Francisco with Roland.
“The fog from the Pacific was coming in. The Golden Gate Bridge, framed by the west- facing window, half suspended in the mist, and it would soon become invisible when the night fell.
Roland was smoking — said it was to be his last cigarette.
Lilia was incredulous that they were alone. It was a perfect movie set for a perfect love affair. He was worldly and handsome, she was young and seductive”.
I really love Yiyun Li’s books.
I enjoyed: “Kinder Than Solitude” and “Where Reason’s End”
She has other books I want to read too.
“Must I Go” takes us inside a diary - written by Roland. ( loved the unique crafting). Lilia shared what Roland left out with her commentaries. We get to see how both Lilia and Roland viewed their life and time together. Roland - former lover - was also the (unaware), biological father of Lilia’s doomed daughter.
The diary opens other flood gates: more memories and secrets.
There is some intricate reflection....”looking back” at Lilia’s life.
Lilia’s daughter, Lucy committed suicide. The grief is obvious....but
Lilia has a tough shell ....not easy to crack. Rambunctious, stubborn, cynical, strong, and mostly unemotional....Lilia is a fascinating character.
“People say all sorts of things about those who have committed suicide. Lucy had been ill. She understood that no doctor could help her so she took care of the matter herself. Lucy knew that she could trust Lilia, and the rest of the family to take good care of Katherine—who was only six years old when her mother died”.
More characters to meet: Sidelle Ogden, Hetty, Peter and Anne Wilson, etc.
“A woman’s value, in Lilia’s opinion, “was not measured by the quality of the men in her life, but by the quality of the women in the lives of those men”.
“The world was full of people like the Wilson’s who understood nothing. They thought that they were humoring Roland by putting some pages of his diaries into print. They felt no qualms about forgetting Roland. Typical of him to trust his posterity to people who dedicated so little of their lives to remembering him”.
Luminous- insightful - elegantly constructed- the characters are rueful, smart, and sometimes unbearably poignant.
Another book that confirms the depth and breadth of Yiyun Li
I’m ready to dive into another that she’s written!
Thank you Netgalley, Random House Publishing, and Yiyun Li
“They start out warm and pure like a bucket of fresh milk, but sooner or later they turned sour”.
Lilia was 81 years old age.....the oldest of six children, five of whom she raised herself.
She had seventeen grandchildren.
Lilia also outlived 3 husbands:
“Some women specialized in marrying the wrong people. Lilia had not been one of them. But all of these husbands were gone, the memory of their large hearts and small vices no more than the vanilla pudding at dinner: low-calorie, no sugar, with barely enough flavor”.
Lilia had an affair with an older man, Roland Bouley, starting when she was only 16 years old.
“Lilia remembered sitting in a hotel room in San Francisco with Roland.
“The fog from the Pacific was coming in. The Golden Gate Bridge, framed by the west- facing window, half suspended in the mist, and it would soon become invisible when the night fell.
Roland was smoking — said it was to be his last cigarette.
Lilia was incredulous that they were alone. It was a perfect movie set for a perfect love affair. He was worldly and handsome, she was young and seductive”.
I really love Yiyun Li’s books.
I enjoyed: “Kinder Than Solitude” and “Where Reason’s End”
She has other books I want to read too.
“Must I Go” takes us inside a diary - written by Roland. ( loved the unique crafting). Lilia shared what Roland left out with her commentaries. We get to see how both Lilia and Roland viewed their life and time together. Roland - former lover - was also the (unaware), biological father of Lilia’s doomed daughter.
The diary opens other flood gates: more memories and secrets.
There is some intricate reflection....”looking back” at Lilia’s life.
Lilia’s daughter, Lucy committed suicide. The grief is obvious....but
Lilia has a tough shell ....not easy to crack. Rambunctious, stubborn, cynical, strong, and mostly unemotional....Lilia is a fascinating character.
“People say all sorts of things about those who have committed suicide. Lucy had been ill. She understood that no doctor could help her so she took care of the matter herself. Lucy knew that she could trust Lilia, and the rest of the family to take good care of Katherine—who was only six years old when her mother died”.
More characters to meet: Sidelle Ogden, Hetty, Peter and Anne Wilson, etc.
“A woman’s value, in Lilia’s opinion, “was not measured by the quality of the men in her life, but by the quality of the women in the lives of those men”.
“The world was full of people like the Wilson’s who understood nothing. They thought that they were humoring Roland by putting some pages of his diaries into print. They felt no qualms about forgetting Roland. Typical of him to trust his posterity to people who dedicated so little of their lives to remembering him”.
Luminous- insightful - elegantly constructed- the characters are rueful, smart, and sometimes unbearably poignant.
Another book that confirms the depth and breadth of Yiyun Li
I’m ready to dive into another that she’s written!
Thank you Netgalley, Random House Publishing, and Yiyun Li
September 7, 2021
Yiyun Li’s narrative’s a complex exploration of mortality, memory, and loss through the character of outspoken Lilia Liska. In her eighties, Lilia lives in a California care facility where she’s renowned for her abrasiveness and a reluctance to participate in group activities. Instead, alone in her room, she obsessively revisits a diary by Roland Bouly, an obscure Canadian book dealer who once dreamt of becoming a famous writer. Lilia only met Roland four times but his impact was long-lasting, unknown to him, he fathered her first child Lucy. And it’s Lucy’s early death by suicide that’s somehow set off Lilia’s fixation with Roland’s journal. Roland’s gone now too but that doesn’t stop Lilia from talking to him through her own version of his book, inserting a commentary that swiftly moves her out of the margins and into the centre. This is an ambitious piece that’s invited comparisons with Nabokov’s Pale Fire, although if there’s a link it seems more trace influence than anything else. I enjoyed Li’s sophisticated use of shifting registers and overlapping voices coming together to form this innovative, unconventional account of a relationship. There were numerous stand-out passages, mostly when Lilia’s speaking, but Roland’s deliberately banal journal entries were less impressive, and I found it increasingly difficult to resist the urge to skim over them. Li’s creation Lilia was often fascinating, self-deluding, opinionated, sometimes savagely witty but the bulk of the novel rested on her shoulders, and I didn’t think she was strong enough to take its weight.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an arc
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an arc
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September 13, 2020On the surface, this is my kinda book: older woman reflecting on life (by means of a “lovers” diary), reflections on motherhood and grief, snarky and Lilia hates people... all of this should be my cup of tea but alas: it was soooo tedious. It’s beautiful sentence overkill.
June 7, 2023
A series of musings on memory, grief, and truth. Through the reflections of Lilia and the diary entries of her forgotten and deceased lover Roland, this novel explores the intimate secrets and losses that we gather in life, as well as the questions of ownership of those things: who decides what is the true version of events? Who has the right to tell the story? Which things are worth revealing, and when? A snarky but heartfelt examination on how perception is such a delicate and versatile aspect of storytelling.
May 10, 2020
It took me an inordinate amount of time to get through this book, not that I was unwilling to pick it up having laid it aside but because of its density - it is exhausting to read. There are so many thought-provoking observations my copy could have been full of annotations - as is Lilia’s copy of Roland’s memoirs. These memoirs have already been reduced from three volumes to one by Roland’s executor, then Lilia’s narrative edits them again for his granddaughter and great-granddaughter to discover, long after his death, ‘who he really was’. As if that were possible. What is so absorbing about this is how different people’s memories of the same event or person are skewed by their own self-interest. Added to this, there are things Roland didn’t know that Lilia does, making her commentary on him unfair, and things Lilia doesn’t know but would desperately like to, but either Roland didn’t consider them important enough to include or so intimate that those pages have been destroyed. She herself is mentioned in his memoir just a handful of times, galling for her but not unexpected since he cannot know how significant a player they should be in each other’s lives.
A very original structure and it worked exceptionally well for me. Roland and Lilia lay themselves bare with what they say and how they say it. I found them fascinating. Both have moments of wry self-awareness that mean their musings stop short of becoming morbid.
Just a few examples of the writing and the flavour of this novel:
A woman’s value, in her opinion, was not measured by the quality of the men in her life, but by the quality of the women in the lives of those men. Lilia, though she appeared only briefly in Roland’s journals, would have made any woman proud.
What happened to Aunt E? There’s not much more to learn from the rest of the book. Roland didn’t forget her. Or else he wouldn’t have kept the entries about her. But he remembered her and he kept her in the diaries because she made him look like an interesting young man. She was an interesting woman. This he forgot.
One must credit the war, which can transform anything into water under the bridge.
I enjoyed it all very much and would highly recommend.
With thanks to Penguin, Hamish Hamilton via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.
A very original structure and it worked exceptionally well for me. Roland and Lilia lay themselves bare with what they say and how they say it. I found them fascinating. Both have moments of wry self-awareness that mean their musings stop short of becoming morbid.
Just a few examples of the writing and the flavour of this novel:
A woman’s value, in her opinion, was not measured by the quality of the men in her life, but by the quality of the women in the lives of those men. Lilia, though she appeared only briefly in Roland’s journals, would have made any woman proud.
What happened to Aunt E? There’s not much more to learn from the rest of the book. Roland didn’t forget her. Or else he wouldn’t have kept the entries about her. But he remembered her and he kept her in the diaries because she made him look like an interesting young man. She was an interesting woman. This he forgot.
One must credit the war, which can transform anything into water under the bridge.
I enjoyed it all very much and would highly recommend.
With thanks to Penguin, Hamish Hamilton via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.
August 5, 2020
I was looking forward to reading this new novel by Yiyun Li, an author I appreciate tremendously. This is Li’s most ambitious and complex work to date, and she, once again, has demonstrated her mastery of the fiction form, but I hate to say, to this reader, unfortunately, it’s rather disappointing. A hundred pages in, the writing already felt tedious. As someone who love beautiful witty prose, I hate to say that I find the novel overly written. There's simply no need to pack an elaborate metaphor or a witty/profound reflection on life and death in almost every paragraph, and it doesn't help that while all of them are perfect in their forms, some are flawed conceptually upon close examination and, perhaps more fatally, they started to lose their originality after a while. Maybe those who disagree would argue that the first one third of the novel is written in the close third person and the rest in the voices of Lilia and Roland alternately, so these observations, from the characters’ perspectives, don't have to be universally true or convincing to all readers. Fair enough, but that’s a risky move, for how long can a writer expect her readers to indulge her without giving them a good reason to? In my case, the longer I stayed with these characters, the harder I had to make myself to stay with them without fighting them, rejecting their smugness.
This brings me to the characters. Unfortunately, I find them hard to believe and harder to sympathize with. Perhaps I just don’t see strength (“hardness”) in unrelenting (micro) cruelty or apathy, much less in an unfound sense of superiority, which are seen in many of the main characters, especially Lilia. For Lilia, it seems no one is good enough, not her parents, nor her children or grandchildren, nor her husbands, nor her lover, nor her lover’s lovers or wife, nor her fellow residents at the seniors’ home, all except perhaps only two women, her great grandmother Lucile and her lover’s lover, Sidelle—women whom she identifies herself with. Even when she praises someone, it’s almost always back-handed criticism of the very quality she praises that she sees simultaneously as a disappointing flaw (her husband Gilbert, a “good man,” is good to a fault, and of course, goodness is just another form of naiveté). Very often, her praise of one only functions to put down another as a contrast. I get it. She’s a woman hardened by life, but does acceptance of pain and life’s unpredictability necessarily require denial of kindness and joy? It seems to me what Lilia proudly takes as triumph is in fact defeat, and courage cowardice. But what puzzles me most about Lilia is her obsession with Roland and those in his life and her utter confidence of knowing all of them better than themselves, even though her knowledge of those people is sole from Roland’s (unreliable) account in his diaries. And it baffles me how a working class woman with not much of education would be attracted to and even identify herself with these aristocratic/high society women whose lives, unburdened by work and chores, mainly consist of intercontinental travels, charity projects, tea parties, and lounging around, a wine glass or a cigarette in hand, with a couple of gentlemen companions eager to entertain them with conversations of interesting anecdotes, poetry, music, and international affairs. In the end, their stories in Roland’s diaries that seem to interest Lilia so much utterly fail to interest me, not even their decades long love stories.
While reading the book, I kept hoping that I’d change my mind, but I didn’t. Surely, towards the end of the novel there seems to be some self-awareness on Lilia's part, but to me, it feels too little, too late.
P.S. I’ve been questioning my own reaction to this novel from the beginning. How much of it comes from my expectations from Li? Will I have the same reaction if it were written by a white male author? To which I have no answers yet.
P.P.S. I just read Parul Sehgal’s review of the novel for the NYT (I had refrained myself from reading any review before I form my own opinion on the novel), and I can’t agree more when she said, “The new book is bloated and unwieldy, however; it lacks the blunt power of its predecessor, which was stark and swift, flensed of artifice. There is a strange feeling of watching Li retreating into a form and narrative structure she has outgrown and outpaced.” I know I said in the beginning that Ali’s demonstrated her mastery of the fiction form in the novel, but the rest of my review is actually saying the opposite. It is precisely the “form,” the narrative that supposedly embodies her own meditation about life and death that is wanting. It’s just not a good story.
I’m not surprised that Sehgal, like others, considers the novel in the context of the writer’s life, which I tried to avoid doing. Perhaps there’s insights to be gained, but I’m always wary of disrespecting an author by interpreting and judging their work on the basis of the assumption that we somehow understand their real life experience or their intentions of writing. But I might be wrong. Maybe some authors do want readers to appreciate their work with an understanding of them, or the work itself is an attempt for them to “express themselves.” In this sense, perhaps out of respect, I’m in fact refusing to take interest in the writer’s experience and her indulgence of sharing it, no matter how subtly it’s done. That’s partly why I said I’m not sure whether I’d feel the same about the novel if Li were a white male writer, because plenty of white male writers are allowed such indulgence and we have no problem about it.
This brings me to the characters. Unfortunately, I find them hard to believe and harder to sympathize with. Perhaps I just don’t see strength (“hardness”) in unrelenting (micro) cruelty or apathy, much less in an unfound sense of superiority, which are seen in many of the main characters, especially Lilia. For Lilia, it seems no one is good enough, not her parents, nor her children or grandchildren, nor her husbands, nor her lover, nor her lover’s lovers or wife, nor her fellow residents at the seniors’ home, all except perhaps only two women, her great grandmother Lucile and her lover’s lover, Sidelle—women whom she identifies herself with. Even when she praises someone, it’s almost always back-handed criticism of the very quality she praises that she sees simultaneously as a disappointing flaw (her husband Gilbert, a “good man,” is good to a fault, and of course, goodness is just another form of naiveté). Very often, her praise of one only functions to put down another as a contrast. I get it. She’s a woman hardened by life, but does acceptance of pain and life’s unpredictability necessarily require denial of kindness and joy? It seems to me what Lilia proudly takes as triumph is in fact defeat, and courage cowardice. But what puzzles me most about Lilia is her obsession with Roland and those in his life and her utter confidence of knowing all of them better than themselves, even though her knowledge of those people is sole from Roland’s (unreliable) account in his diaries. And it baffles me how a working class woman with not much of education would be attracted to and even identify herself with these aristocratic/high society women whose lives, unburdened by work and chores, mainly consist of intercontinental travels, charity projects, tea parties, and lounging around, a wine glass or a cigarette in hand, with a couple of gentlemen companions eager to entertain them with conversations of interesting anecdotes, poetry, music, and international affairs. In the end, their stories in Roland’s diaries that seem to interest Lilia so much utterly fail to interest me, not even their decades long love stories.
While reading the book, I kept hoping that I’d change my mind, but I didn’t. Surely, towards the end of the novel there seems to be some self-awareness on Lilia's part, but to me, it feels too little, too late.
P.S. I’ve been questioning my own reaction to this novel from the beginning. How much of it comes from my expectations from Li? Will I have the same reaction if it were written by a white male author? To which I have no answers yet.
P.P.S. I just read Parul Sehgal’s review of the novel for the NYT (I had refrained myself from reading any review before I form my own opinion on the novel), and I can’t agree more when she said, “The new book is bloated and unwieldy, however; it lacks the blunt power of its predecessor, which was stark and swift, flensed of artifice. There is a strange feeling of watching Li retreating into a form and narrative structure she has outgrown and outpaced.” I know I said in the beginning that Ali’s demonstrated her mastery of the fiction form in the novel, but the rest of my review is actually saying the opposite. It is precisely the “form,” the narrative that supposedly embodies her own meditation about life and death that is wanting. It’s just not a good story.
I’m not surprised that Sehgal, like others, considers the novel in the context of the writer’s life, which I tried to avoid doing. Perhaps there’s insights to be gained, but I’m always wary of disrespecting an author by interpreting and judging their work on the basis of the assumption that we somehow understand their real life experience or their intentions of writing. But I might be wrong. Maybe some authors do want readers to appreciate their work with an understanding of them, or the work itself is an attempt for them to “express themselves.” In this sense, perhaps out of respect, I’m in fact refusing to take interest in the writer’s experience and her indulgence of sharing it, no matter how subtly it’s done. That’s partly why I said I’m not sure whether I’d feel the same about the novel if Li were a white male writer, because plenty of white male writers are allowed such indulgence and we have no problem about it.
July 9, 2025
This book is awful. The plot is uninteresting. The prose is weak. And the characters are boring. What I had the biggest issue with is the narrative voice. We are following an 80 year old women who is reflecting on her life lived and she is pretentious to the point of comedy and all of her wise saying and anecdotes have no weight because the wisdom the author wants us to belie she has was bestowed on herself an not earned. We are just to take her word that she knows so much about life but the book doesn't allow us to understand why we should do that. She just seems like old women who is delusional and losing her mind and you never get sense thats how the book expects you to feel. This book lacks a point and is daunting to complete.
dnf
September 19, 2020i just couldn't do it anymore
i didn't like Lilia at all - there is nothing noble or inspiring about being apathetic, rude, and cold about life. this does not make anyone superior or smarter or better. it makes them mean and unlikable. and i couldn't read anymore pages about that. i am not interested in reading a book where the main character shits on other women while spending the entire book (read: her entire life) fixating on a man.
maybe it would have gotten better - if there was more insight to be gleaned and more understanding to be done about why Lilia felt and acted the way she did. but i wasn't invested enough to stick around and find out.
i didn't like Lilia at all - there is nothing noble or inspiring about being apathetic, rude, and cold about life. this does not make anyone superior or smarter or better. it makes them mean and unlikable. and i couldn't read anymore pages about that. i am not interested in reading a book where the main character shits on other women while spending the entire book (read: her entire life) fixating on a man.
maybe it would have gotten better - if there was more insight to be gleaned and more understanding to be done about why Lilia felt and acted the way she did. but i wasn't invested enough to stick around and find out.
July 1, 2020
I really love Yiyun Li, so this was a bit disappointing. The book is not bad, just long and slow, and I found that the conceit strained. I prefer Li's nonfiction, or her earlier novels.
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April 11, 2024“Admito que gostei bastante de algumas passagens e reflexões que a autora foi deixando, mas o geral do livro foi tão secante, que nem sequer consigo lembrar-me de alguns para partilhar convosco. Separadamente, os temas abordados são interessantes: o confronto de memórias, a perda de um filho, os segredos que somos obrigados a esconder, etc. Contudo, enquanto história com princípio, meio e fim, não consegui achar cativante.”
Review completa em: https://ritadanova.blogs.sapo.pt/must....
Review completa em: https://ritadanova.blogs.sapo.pt/must....
April 21, 2020
Thank you to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review of Must I Go by Yiyun Li. I will be logging this for my 2020 Bangtanathon selection for Jamais Vu!
The book focuses on an 80-something year old woman named Lilia who had an affair with a man named Roland. Roland is the unwitting father of her oldest daughter Lucy who is no longer living. It is told in three main parts. The first part is largely a story set up which focuses on Lilia’s personality. Lilia is cynical with unflinching views on the world around her. She’s experienced grief and resilience which has made her the person she is today. Part two goes into the affair and how there is a miraculous element of two lives coming together. This part sheds light on how certain chance encounters can completely alter life which is something I think about all the time.
Part three is the longest part which is unfortunately the part that loses me a bit. I think that it’s creative and interesting to have a book that critiques an ex-lovers memoir or diary. However, the first two sections are about Lilia and her family life while this part is full of diary entries that are all about Roland. There are a lot of entries that have nothing to do with Lilia and it kind of removes me from the main character’s story.
I am a big fan of literary fiction. I love how experimental this story is and I enjoyed how sharp Lilia is when it comes to life, love, loss, and moving forward. The story is a bit of a slow burn but because of this and the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to fully invest in Roland’s life, it makes for a boring read. I just didn’t understand what the end goal was even though I was interested in the main character.
Another thing that I enjoyed was the relationship between Lilia and her daughter. Mother-daughter relationships in books are among my favorites but even that wasn’t enough to keep me interested. I’m sure that this book is for someone out there but it just wasn’t for me. While this is a relatively short novel, I didn’t find it particularly easy to read
It’s just not my taste which is why I am giving this such a low rating.
The book focuses on an 80-something year old woman named Lilia who had an affair with a man named Roland. Roland is the unwitting father of her oldest daughter Lucy who is no longer living. It is told in three main parts. The first part is largely a story set up which focuses on Lilia’s personality. Lilia is cynical with unflinching views on the world around her. She’s experienced grief and resilience which has made her the person she is today. Part two goes into the affair and how there is a miraculous element of two lives coming together. This part sheds light on how certain chance encounters can completely alter life which is something I think about all the time.
Part three is the longest part which is unfortunately the part that loses me a bit. I think that it’s creative and interesting to have a book that critiques an ex-lovers memoir or diary. However, the first two sections are about Lilia and her family life while this part is full of diary entries that are all about Roland. There are a lot of entries that have nothing to do with Lilia and it kind of removes me from the main character’s story.
I am a big fan of literary fiction. I love how experimental this story is and I enjoyed how sharp Lilia is when it comes to life, love, loss, and moving forward. The story is a bit of a slow burn but because of this and the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to fully invest in Roland’s life, it makes for a boring read. I just didn’t understand what the end goal was even though I was interested in the main character.
Another thing that I enjoyed was the relationship between Lilia and her daughter. Mother-daughter relationships in books are among my favorites but even that wasn’t enough to keep me interested. I’m sure that this book is for someone out there but it just wasn’t for me. While this is a relatively short novel, I didn’t find it particularly easy to read
It’s just not my taste which is why I am giving this such a low rating.
March 5, 2023
Now THIS is a Vibes Novel. Never come across a book so well sustained by its style and narrative voice.
Getting a character to annotate another character's memoir for two thirds of a novel is... so fascinating. I was sceptical that it could work for that long. But here we are. It's Li's level of observation and just like the chop of her sentences that make it absolutely bang.
It's also refreshing to see a book develop characters with so few visuals. It's all voice voice voice here. The trade off is that some of the cast of this big, complicated family are cloudier than others, but the ones who shine we get to know in such a gradual and organic way.
It just simmers along so nicely. Hits good emotional moments without knocking itself unbalanced. It's definitely not a book for everyone, but I could have happily hung out with it for a few more hundred pages.
Getting a character to annotate another character's memoir for two thirds of a novel is... so fascinating. I was sceptical that it could work for that long. But here we are. It's Li's level of observation and just like the chop of her sentences that make it absolutely bang.
It's also refreshing to see a book develop characters with so few visuals. It's all voice voice voice here. The trade off is that some of the cast of this big, complicated family are cloudier than others, but the ones who shine we get to know in such a gradual and organic way.
It just simmers along so nicely. Hits good emotional moments without knocking itself unbalanced. It's definitely not a book for everyone, but I could have happily hung out with it for a few more hundred pages.
March 9, 2022
I just did not like this one. I honestly should have just thrown in the towel and added it to my DNF list, however when I realized my opinion was never going to change I was already almost halfway done and figured I should just finish it. This book felt like I was walking through mud that was up to my hips. I couldn’t bring myself to like nor care about any of the characters we were introduced to. Lilia was almost impossible to like, and I found it difficult to understand why she was so obsessed with Roland’s life. I do normally enjoy books that are written in diary entries, but again I just didn’t care about these people! This is a novel that I will quickly forget.
July 28, 2020
Yiyun Li is one of those novelists whose books I like not love while reading, and within a few days of reading them I can’t recall a single thing about them. I felt this way about Kinder than Solitude, I felt this about Where Reasons End. At least with this one, there’s a thoroughly uncompromising heroine, who I might remember. Might being the key word. It’s also a more experimental novel than the other two where 2/3s of the book is actually a memoir/diary of Lilia’s dead one time lover, whom she met for a total of 4 times, and with whom she conceived a baby from the second meeting. The daughter, now dead, never knew about her biological father, Lilia having married another man soon after conception, but Lilia decides to annotate the man’s vanity project with some peppered comments of her own for her granddaughter and her daughter to consume.
This is the gist. The sum total of Lilia’s life and that of her daughter’s is in the middle of some man’s diaries, and an argument can be made that Lilia is a known quantity to her granddaughter while this man comes from out of the left field, and so it is important for his life to be included to a greater extent. However, as much as I can understand Roland Bouley might well have been compelling to a sixteen year old Lilia, the man comes across as a self absorbed and whiny, whose one claim to fame was to have carried on a decades long affair with an older, minor poetess. He has no personality to speak of, and however much Lilia wants it to be so, it doesn’t appear on paper. To be fair, in her annotations Lilia seems aggressive enough. But really, four encounters aren’t a grand romance, and this whole searching for his manuscript and presuming to know everything about his wife (he had one), and his lovers and his life smacks of a delusion to a grand romance. However much you deny it. I just wish it was wasted on a better class of man than Roland Bouley.
All the time I was reading this book, and it took a me a long while to finish it, I felt pity for Lilia. Lilia, maybe if you had concentrated less on Roland and more on the child you made with him, or her child who seems to shy away from conflict of all sorts, or any of your other children you seem to hate... but then I don’t know what. Lilia is unchangeable, she seems to have sprung up as she is when she is prepared to die. Hard, not unfeeling, but uncompromising enough to make her story oddly flat.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
This is the gist. The sum total of Lilia’s life and that of her daughter’s is in the middle of some man’s diaries, and an argument can be made that Lilia is a known quantity to her granddaughter while this man comes from out of the left field, and so it is important for his life to be included to a greater extent. However, as much as I can understand Roland Bouley might well have been compelling to a sixteen year old Lilia, the man comes across as a self absorbed and whiny, whose one claim to fame was to have carried on a decades long affair with an older, minor poetess. He has no personality to speak of, and however much Lilia wants it to be so, it doesn’t appear on paper. To be fair, in her annotations Lilia seems aggressive enough. But really, four encounters aren’t a grand romance, and this whole searching for his manuscript and presuming to know everything about his wife (he had one), and his lovers and his life smacks of a delusion to a grand romance. However much you deny it. I just wish it was wasted on a better class of man than Roland Bouley.
All the time I was reading this book, and it took a me a long while to finish it, I felt pity for Lilia. Lilia, maybe if you had concentrated less on Roland and more on the child you made with him, or her child who seems to shy away from conflict of all sorts, or any of your other children you seem to hate... but then I don’t know what. Lilia is unchangeable, she seems to have sprung up as she is when she is prepared to die. Hard, not unfeeling, but uncompromising enough to make her story oddly flat.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.
March 28, 2020
This book primarily focuses on Lilia, a 81 year old grandmother who has lived a full life she's now exploring using the diary of a former lover. This is a slow burn, which overall was satisfying but, for me, did drag in a couple places. Lilia's interaction with the diary itself includes her relationship with the former lover, but also serves as a launching pad for the exploration of Lilia's life itself and her relationship with her daughter. I very much appreciated that this women wasn't only viewed through the lens of her romantic relationships, but as a person herself and as a mother. The layered emotions this book creates overall made it an enjoyable read.
September 29, 2020
The Vagrants remains my favorite book by this author. There is much I really like about this book. Some of the philosophical attitudes were quite interesting. The dialogue & perspective of Mrs. Ogden sounded a bit artificial to me. It reminded me of some of Henry James's characters tho it seems appropriate in James and forced here. The total narcissism of Roland is sometimes tiring.
I'm still thinking this book through. I had a very mixed reaction. Maybe, at some point, I'll try to write a more cohesive review.
I'm still thinking this book through. I had a very mixed reaction. Maybe, at some point, I'll try to write a more cohesive review.
August 8, 2020
I was excited to read Yiyun Li’s latest novel, Must I Go, but I was sorely disappointed. Her writing has delighted and entranced me since the first short story I read in the New Yorker several years ago. This novel showcased her beautiful writing and prose, but I could not stay interested in the main character, Lilia, and her obsession with Roland Bouley, and his diaries. This novel did not hold my interest at all.
August 29, 2020
I think we’re all suckers for the name of a book being uttered in said book, but rarely have I seen it deployed so EFFECTIVELY as in Must I Go. I am crying in a Chick-Fil-A parking lot! I’m overjoyed to be alive and terrified of death! I’m putting “film adaptation with Ellen Burstyn winning an Oscar for the ‘Give me an axe and a hoe and I’ll start a garden’ monologue” on my vision board!!!
December 31, 2021
I gave up on this book just over halfway through because I found it so tedious. I liked the premise, an elderly woman looks back over her life and relationships whilst reading the diaries of a past lover and annotates the diaries with her own view of events. I thought it would be humorous. And I was drawn by the lovely pastel pink cover (UK version).
August 19, 2025
I think the author thought she was writing something extremely profound when really it was just ramblings however i do like reading books from older womens pov because sometimes they’re quite savage or i can learn some life lessons lol (not really in this instance)
Also i only picked this up bc it was pink and pretty
Also i only picked this up bc it was pink and pretty
April 3, 2023
Historia o pamięci i o tym, jak bardzo prawdziwy człowiek jest na kartkach książki - własnej lub napisanej przez kogoś innego.
Plusy:
- Złożoność przesłania i relacji między bohaterami. Yiyun Li jest w tym mistrzynią.
Minusy:
- Tempo - książka jest fragmentaryczna, nie dąży do żadnego jasnego zawiązania fabularnego, co jest charakterystyczne dla książek Yiyun Li i co zazwyczaj mi się podoba, bo nie potrzebuję wartkiej akcji, ale tutaj miałam wrażenie, że historia po prostu wisi gdzieś w przestrzeni.
Ani plus ani minus:
- Bohaterowie, którzy mają bardzo złożone życie wewnętrzne, ale których szczerze nie znoszę, więc im lepiej ich poznawałam, tym bardziej mnie irytowali.
- Styl, który był po prostu inny niż we wcześniejszych książkach autorki (takich jak „Tysiąc lat dobrych modlitw” czy „Łaskawszy niż samotność”)
Więcej tutaj: https://youtu.be/yYdvFXCwOHk
Plusy:
- Złożoność przesłania i relacji między bohaterami. Yiyun Li jest w tym mistrzynią.
Minusy:
- Tempo - książka jest fragmentaryczna, nie dąży do żadnego jasnego zawiązania fabularnego, co jest charakterystyczne dla książek Yiyun Li i co zazwyczaj mi się podoba, bo nie potrzebuję wartkiej akcji, ale tutaj miałam wrażenie, że historia po prostu wisi gdzieś w przestrzeni.
Ani plus ani minus:
- Bohaterowie, którzy mają bardzo złożone życie wewnętrzne, ale których szczerze nie znoszę, więc im lepiej ich poznawałam, tym bardziej mnie irytowali.
- Styl, który był po prostu inny niż we wcześniejszych książkach autorki (takich jak „Tysiąc lat dobrych modlitw” czy „Łaskawszy niż samotność”)
Więcej tutaj: https://youtu.be/yYdvFXCwOHk
Read
February 10, 2021No date, no rating - DNF @ p20
I desperately wanted to love this one! Conceptually, this soundedd amazing. However, I require a certain writing style in my books that this one just didn't deliver. The prose is beautiful... but that eventually becomes overkill. Every paragraph has some witty metaphor that I can't get my head around, that I have to really think about, which is jarring and takes me out of the story completely. So, while I love the idea of the story itself, the writing let it down for me, as did the family tree that I just couldn't wrap my head around!
Thank you to Yiyun Li, Netgalley and Hamish Hamilton for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
I desperately wanted to love this one! Conceptually, this soundedd amazing. However, I require a certain writing style in my books that this one just didn't deliver. The prose is beautiful... but that eventually becomes overkill. Every paragraph has some witty metaphor that I can't get my head around, that I have to really think about, which is jarring and takes me out of the story completely. So, while I love the idea of the story itself, the writing let it down for me, as did the family tree that I just couldn't wrap my head around!
Thank you to Yiyun Li, Netgalley and Hamish Hamilton for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
March 11, 2025
Does documenting a life make it worth documenting? I didn't expect this book to ever end. The form of the book is a lifelong conversation, in that it brackets the births and deaths of many of the characters (and there are many characters). But really, the lengths of their lives matter less than the pages devoted to them, so rather, it's booklong, and I wish the book were longer. This doesn't really make sense. I will miss this book and hard-as-life Lilia.
It was like boarding the wrong train, the father it travels, the less point there is in going on, and the lesser in getting off
It was like boarding the wrong train, the father it travels, the less point there is in going on, and the lesser in getting off
August 24, 2020
I listened to the audiobook, and it was really difficult for me to power through. I enjoyed the writing and there were many good quotes, but the story was repetitive and there wasn’t one character that I liked. It was hard for me to connect with any of them.
December 11, 2021
Not a 2 because I hated it, (which is usually what warrants a 2) but it just seemed like a good-ish book I could not bring myself to care about.
August 8, 2023
Este libro me ha estado volviendo loca un tiempo... y es que creo que no cumple nada de lo que promete, aunque contiene retazos de lo que podría haber sido para mí un diez absoluto.
Me explico: me lo vendieron como "un libro que habla del duelo" y no lo es. No tengo claro qué es. Llegado a cierto punto pensé que era una especie de memoria de Lilia, pero he aquí el factor que más rabia me ha dado: no conozco a Lilia. De todos los personajes de la novela, el último que me resulta plausible es Roland, y me da rabia.
Encontré repetitivas todas aquellas partes donde ella era quien hablaba, exceptuando una conversación que tiene con su marido, en la que sin embargo me maravillé... pero claro, en ese diálogo, él manejaba las interacciones y guiaba la conversación. Supongo que podría haberme dado la sensación incluso de que conozco más a este hombre que a quien debería (Lilia).
Por último, considero que el segundo "Gran Fallo" es que, de nuevo Lilia, es un personaje incongruente: narra, narra, narra... pero son palabras vacías, que nunca se apoyan con actos. Al menos yo, como lectora, es algo que detesto y que impide que el personaje me resulte verosímil.
Entonces, ¿por qué 4 estrellas al final?
Bueno, la parte de Roland me ha gustado un montón; también he querido terminar de leerlo en lugar de dejarlo a un lado y porque el estilo de escritura me gustó muchísimo.
Sin más.
Me explico: me lo vendieron como "un libro que habla del duelo" y no lo es. No tengo claro qué es. Llegado a cierto punto pensé que era una especie de memoria de Lilia, pero he aquí el factor que más rabia me ha dado: no conozco a Lilia. De todos los personajes de la novela, el último que me resulta plausible es Roland, y me da rabia.
Encontré repetitivas todas aquellas partes donde ella era quien hablaba, exceptuando una conversación que tiene con su marido, en la que sin embargo me maravillé... pero claro, en ese diálogo, él manejaba las interacciones y guiaba la conversación. Supongo que podría haberme dado la sensación incluso de que conozco más a este hombre que a quien debería (Lilia).
Por último, considero que el segundo "Gran Fallo" es que, de nuevo Lilia, es un personaje incongruente: narra, narra, narra... pero son palabras vacías, que nunca se apoyan con actos. Al menos yo, como lectora, es algo que detesto y que impide que el personaje me resulte verosímil.
Entonces, ¿por qué 4 estrellas al final?
Bueno, la parte de Roland me ha gustado un montón; también he querido terminar de leerlo en lugar de dejarlo a un lado y porque el estilo de escritura me gustó muchísimo.
Sin más.
February 17, 2021
The premise is interesting—and I imagine may be better than audiobook, depending on how it is presented in text format—but it is really overwritten and some characters that not only become unlikeable, but actually grating. There are others that countermand this but when it swings back to them it really does feel tedious. It’s actually maybe a testament to how well written the parts that work is that I came away thinking it was alright and did not stop reading it entirely.
The narrators themselves are also pretty good. I really do wonder if this is the ideal format for the book, considering the premise. I really like the idea of annotating an existing text, and it could be presented really interestingly, maybe sell the concept better. As is, it’s fine, but I expected more from it considering the accolades of the author and the concept. Pretty sure I got this from a best books of the year list, so maybe my overall expectations were inflated as well.
The narrators themselves are also pretty good. I really do wonder if this is the ideal format for the book, considering the premise. I really like the idea of annotating an existing text, and it could be presented really interestingly, maybe sell the concept better. As is, it’s fine, but I expected more from it considering the accolades of the author and the concept. Pretty sure I got this from a best books of the year list, so maybe my overall expectations were inflated as well.
August 16, 2020
Slow start, but intriguing enough I couldn't abandon.
April 22, 2020
Thank you to Random House Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC
Roland Bouley, the character at the centre of Must I Go, is the sort of protagonist that Great Writers (ie, white and male) like to write about, and the sort of protagonist who usually instantly turns me off a book. Bouley is a twentieth century writer. He has lived a full, globe-trotting life. He is deeply selfish, and counts a loyal wife (Hetty) alongside a lifelong muse (Sidelle Ogden) and countless other lovers.
Must I Go is not, however, an ordinary narrative about an obnoxious writer who we are somehow expected to root for. The book may revolve around Bouley but our protagonist is 81 year old Californian Lilia Imbody (nee Liska), one of Bouley’s many fleeting love affairs: ‘Lilia Liska from Benicia, California, that’s who I am. Always’. Lilia had borne Bouley a daughter (Lucy) unbeknownst to him, raised by her husband (Gilbert, the first of three). Lucy, who reminded Lilia of Bouley in personality and temperament, committed suicide young (Lilia didn’t cry – ‘crying is not my way. Arguing is’). Lucy in turn left her own daughter Katherine, who also has a daughter (Iola), Lilia’s great-granddaughter. Lilia has a large family, with many siblings in each generation – it is a confident author that assembles such a large cast for what is effectively a first-person epistolary novel.
The narrative conceit of Must I Go is that the bulk of the book consists of the annotations Lilia for Katherine and Iola in an edition of Roland Bouley’s diaries. Lilia features in Bouley’s diaries only in passing (as with other lovers, known only as an initial). On page 154 of Bouley’s diaries she is described as ‘the kind of girl my future wife would disapprove of’. We are being told two lives: Bouley’s by his own hand and with Lilia’s commentary; and Lilia’s own life. In the version I read there was no clear formatting distinction made between Bouley’s entries and Lilia’s annotations (I’m sure this will be made clearer in the physical editions), but such is the clarity of Li’s writing that the voices of Roland and Lilia are immediately distinguishable. Lilia is a fabulous creation – she is spiky, funny, reflective and rather morbid. She is deeply judgemental about the other residents of her home (particularly those engaged in memoir writing classes). There is just the touch of Baby Jane about her. Roland, through his diary entries, is less distinctive – but this is more a function of his selfish character being rather more familiar to us than the much more original, insightful and interesting Lilia.
Lilia is outwardly morbid but her writing about death is touching, thoughtful and original. Yiyun Li has a closer relationship with death than most would wish and has explored it in previous books, and has identified writing fiction as a necessity to engage with her own self. I note that the acknowledgements to Must I Go mention soberly that ‘the writing of this novel was interrupted by life’ – death may well have been at the forefront of her mind, but if so then life and memory were too. I highlighted countless phrases in Must I Go, almost all about memory or death, and almost all uniquely beautiful and original.
The conceit allows Li to play with structure and narrative. Not only do we know that the diaries are heavily edited, but we also know that whole sections were destroyed at Sidelle’s request, and we are only shown the entries Lilia chooses to annotate for Katherine and Iola – notably not including the passages about her. Everything we receive is filtered (or clouded) multiple times. Li even manages to have her cake and eat it – after a slightly meandering section of Bouley’s diaries, Lilia blames Roland for not being able to ‘tell what was important, and what was not’. Lilia is frequently exasperated with him (‘why was he so afraid of being forgotten, when he himself invested so little in remembering others?’) but her annotations are tinged with a romantic nostalgia of a life lived with great character, but also great heartache, and yet no regrets.
At times it feels like a great hall of mirrors filled with dry ice – beautiful but ambiguous and somewhat discombobulating. But, unexpectedly, the narrative punches come at the end of Bouley’s diaries with the deaths of his wife Hetty and muse Sidelle. We realise that we have never really known either woman, we have only read Roland’s selfish unthinking opinions, and Lilia’s ill-informed views. A similar effect happens when we learn that Lilia’s first husband Gilbert, who apparently unknowingly raised Roland’s daughter Lucy as his own, did in fact know of her parentage. We see suddenly that all these characters lived their own rich, full and complex lives – but our narrators are not able to do justice to them. Memory, we are reminded, is not just selective, fragmented and unreliable, but also profoundly subjective – and ultimately transient. We can leave behind a memoir; we can even leave behind annotations of someone else’s memoir; but we can’t leave behind truth. Must I Go is an immensely rewarding read.
Roland Bouley, the character at the centre of Must I Go, is the sort of protagonist that Great Writers (ie, white and male) like to write about, and the sort of protagonist who usually instantly turns me off a book. Bouley is a twentieth century writer. He has lived a full, globe-trotting life. He is deeply selfish, and counts a loyal wife (Hetty) alongside a lifelong muse (Sidelle Ogden) and countless other lovers.
Must I Go is not, however, an ordinary narrative about an obnoxious writer who we are somehow expected to root for. The book may revolve around Bouley but our protagonist is 81 year old Californian Lilia Imbody (nee Liska), one of Bouley’s many fleeting love affairs: ‘Lilia Liska from Benicia, California, that’s who I am. Always’. Lilia had borne Bouley a daughter (Lucy) unbeknownst to him, raised by her husband (Gilbert, the first of three). Lucy, who reminded Lilia of Bouley in personality and temperament, committed suicide young (Lilia didn’t cry – ‘crying is not my way. Arguing is’). Lucy in turn left her own daughter Katherine, who also has a daughter (Iola), Lilia’s great-granddaughter. Lilia has a large family, with many siblings in each generation – it is a confident author that assembles such a large cast for what is effectively a first-person epistolary novel.
The narrative conceit of Must I Go is that the bulk of the book consists of the annotations Lilia for Katherine and Iola in an edition of Roland Bouley’s diaries. Lilia features in Bouley’s diaries only in passing (as with other lovers, known only as an initial). On page 154 of Bouley’s diaries she is described as ‘the kind of girl my future wife would disapprove of’. We are being told two lives: Bouley’s by his own hand and with Lilia’s commentary; and Lilia’s own life. In the version I read there was no clear formatting distinction made between Bouley’s entries and Lilia’s annotations (I’m sure this will be made clearer in the physical editions), but such is the clarity of Li’s writing that the voices of Roland and Lilia are immediately distinguishable. Lilia is a fabulous creation – she is spiky, funny, reflective and rather morbid. She is deeply judgemental about the other residents of her home (particularly those engaged in memoir writing classes). There is just the touch of Baby Jane about her. Roland, through his diary entries, is less distinctive – but this is more a function of his selfish character being rather more familiar to us than the much more original, insightful and interesting Lilia.
Lilia is outwardly morbid but her writing about death is touching, thoughtful and original. Yiyun Li has a closer relationship with death than most would wish and has explored it in previous books, and has identified writing fiction as a necessity to engage with her own self. I note that the acknowledgements to Must I Go mention soberly that ‘the writing of this novel was interrupted by life’ – death may well have been at the forefront of her mind, but if so then life and memory were too. I highlighted countless phrases in Must I Go, almost all about memory or death, and almost all uniquely beautiful and original.
The conceit allows Li to play with structure and narrative. Not only do we know that the diaries are heavily edited, but we also know that whole sections were destroyed at Sidelle’s request, and we are only shown the entries Lilia chooses to annotate for Katherine and Iola – notably not including the passages about her. Everything we receive is filtered (or clouded) multiple times. Li even manages to have her cake and eat it – after a slightly meandering section of Bouley’s diaries, Lilia blames Roland for not being able to ‘tell what was important, and what was not’. Lilia is frequently exasperated with him (‘why was he so afraid of being forgotten, when he himself invested so little in remembering others?’) but her annotations are tinged with a romantic nostalgia of a life lived with great character, but also great heartache, and yet no regrets.
At times it feels like a great hall of mirrors filled with dry ice – beautiful but ambiguous and somewhat discombobulating. But, unexpectedly, the narrative punches come at the end of Bouley’s diaries with the deaths of his wife Hetty and muse Sidelle. We realise that we have never really known either woman, we have only read Roland’s selfish unthinking opinions, and Lilia’s ill-informed views. A similar effect happens when we learn that Lilia’s first husband Gilbert, who apparently unknowingly raised Roland’s daughter Lucy as his own, did in fact know of her parentage. We see suddenly that all these characters lived their own rich, full and complex lives – but our narrators are not able to do justice to them. Memory, we are reminded, is not just selective, fragmented and unreliable, but also profoundly subjective – and ultimately transient. We can leave behind a memoir; we can even leave behind annotations of someone else’s memoir; but we can’t leave behind truth. Must I Go is an immensely rewarding read.
Read
August 21, 2023the journal part of this book made up almost more than half of it, which is a shame for how boring and repetitive i found it. Lilia as a character was interesting, witty, genuinely complex and i’d rather read about her. loved how grief was written and explored in this. less men needed!
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