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