num_pages: 312
description: A profound mystery is at the heart of this magnificent new novel by Yiyun Li one of Americas best young novelists (Newsweek) and the celebrated author of The Vagrants winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Moving back and forth in time between America today and China in the 1990s Kinder Than Solitude is the story of three people whose lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed. As one of the three observes Even the most innocent person when cornered is capable of a heartless crime. When Moran Ruyu and Boyang were young they were involved in a mysterious accident in which a friend of theirs was poisoned. Grown up the three friends are separated by distance and personal estrangement. Moran and Ruyu live in the United States Boyang in China; all three are haunted by what really happened in their youth and by doubt about themselves. In California Ruyu helps a local woman care for her family and home and avoids entanglements as she has done all her life. In Wisconsin Moran visits her ex-husband whose kindness once overcame her flight into solitude. In Beijing Boyang struggles to deal with an inability to love and with the outcome of what happened among the three friends twenty years ago. Brilliantly written a breathtaking page-turner Kinder Than Solitude resonates with provocative observations about human nature and life. In mesmerizing prose and with profound insight Yiyun Li unfolds this remarkable story even as she explores the impact of personality and the past on the shape of a persons present and future.
language: English
title: Kinder Than Solitude
publisher: Random House