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 20 years ago.
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“There’s something about the poise, the tidiness, the seemingly effortless calm of Yiyun Li’s writing that makes it easy to see her as an author who, like Jhumpa Lahiri, employs a Chekovian neutrality… But look again…There’s a withering, vibrating sarcasm at work in the juxtaposition of national and personal tragedies.”
— New York Times
“Yiyun Li has such an authentic voice, and she is not afraid of cutting to the bone to get to the truth of relationships and emotions. I believe Kinder Than Solitude is her best novel yet.”
— Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author“Illuminating, morally complex, and symphonic…a sweeping novel of struggle, survival, and love in the time of oppression.”
— Oprah Magazine, praise for The Vagrants“An example of the treasure an artist can fashion from the raw materials of ordinary existence.”
— New York Times Book Review, praise for Gold Boy, Emerald Girl“Beautifully paced, exquisitely detailed…a spellbinding vision of the power of the human spirit.”
— Chicago Tribune, praise for The VagrantsBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University.
Angela Lin, an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA degree in drama. A critically acclaimed actress, her credits include The Good Wife, Law & Order: SVU, and As the World Turns, among others.