Yiyun Li Continues Her Conversations With The Dead In 'Must I Go'
Yiyun Li's new book — about a woman looking back on her life by annotating the diary of her late ex-lover — plays with both Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire and Li's own previous work.
Must I Go is a concentric exploration of narrative voice, love, grief, marriage, and family history that seems to echo the Hamilton song, "Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story." Yiyun Li's new novel begins in 2010, with 81-year-old Lilia Liska Imbody looking back on her life as she annotates her ex-lover Roland Bouley's posthumous diary.
This fictional device is "meta" in the sense that it allows Li to play with Nabokov's . Her Lilia — no-nonsense and sharp-tongued — is the anti-thesis of Nabokov's
