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

Wowww...this book felt like a chunkster although physically it isn't. Took quite some effort to finish it. I truly enjoyed Where Reasons End, but this, unfortunately, not so much.

Lilia is quite a character. Hard, stubborn, strong, unemotional, cold, yet it felt like she created this barrier to shield herself from sadness and disappointment. That said, she loved Gilbert unconditionally and gave him a safe home and 5 healthy children. She also showed some tough love towards Katherine. I could feel that she was one who could love deeply but chose not to show it.

I can tell that Lucy was a great loss to Lilia although she didn't show it. She felt guilty for her death. I felt that she looked into Roland's diary not exactly to get to know him and his love affairs and how he fared in life withou her, but rather to find fault and blame for Lucy's death, or find a trace of Lucy in him.

It's so hard to connect to any of the chatacters, especially Lilia, despite her wise observations on love, life and loss. I had a lot of her thoughts and wisdom, highlighted. Those kept me going.

Besides Lilia, I did love reading about Sidelle and Hetty too and how they were so different yet alike in so many ways. One thing was for sure - they made their own rules, and made men (Roland) play by their rules in their own way.

And adding her own notes to Roland's memoir was quite an interesting concept.

Overall, a little disappointed as I had high expectations after reading 'Where Reasons End'. This book is probably just not for me. Another reader might appreciate it.

Must I Go is a creative novel, the story of a nonagenarian critiquing the memoir of the father of her first child. Yiyun Li is an artful writer who has created a shrewd, no-nonsense narrator, Lilia, who is confident, occasionally infuriating, and just plain intriguing. However - I rarely have this criticism - it's a little too ambitious - its breadth of setting and character never quite settles; Lilia weaves her focus in and out at too high a rate for my peace-seeking brain.

<I>Must I Go</I> by Yiyun Li is a novel presented in a way that I have never encountered before. The first quarter or so of the book introduces the reader to Lilia, a woman who had outlived three husbands, and reminisces about her time with Roland Bouley, a man she met prior to her first husband and continued her relationship with him for several years. At first glance, one would think she is placing a lot of emphasis on her relationship with Roland until secrets are revealed. The bulk of the book is Roland's diary, with Lilia's annotations in there, as she feels like his diary was inappropriately downsized and is missing important components. What becomes of this section is a history of both Roland's impressions of his life, and Lilia's thoughts on her life and how themes encountered by Roland are reflected in her own life. Lilia is a really intriguing character, and her relationships with her first husband, her eldest daughter, and remaining children are really fascinating. I will admit that this is a bit of a slog to get through, I found myself much more interested in Lilia's life than Roland's, so the balance between the two did not work for me personally, but I understand why the author used Roland's diary as a way to parallel Lilia's grief and relationships.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for this advance copy for review.

I gave it a fair shot. I am currently at 43% and I am giving up. I am so lost reading this book. I wanted to give up at 25% but I decided to give it a real chance, but I don't think I can do it anymore.

The premise sounds interesting, but the delivery is just not doing it for me. I don't know what the point is, really. I feel like maybe things will come together in the end of the book, but I am not enjoying reading. I think this is just not the book for me. Sorry book.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Rounding up from 3.5 stars.
There were many things I loved about this novel-- I think the format of commenting on another's diaries to be an interesting point of view, and it certainly helped this novel as the commenter, Lilia, is infinitely more interesting than the diarist, Roland. It felt a bit like flipping and questioning the traditional narratives of this privileged, philandering, self-important man. There were also some really beautiful insights by Lilia and she reflected back on her life and the daughter she lost (which does explain her fascination with Roland, though I couldn't help but still find her obsession a bit difficult to take).
However, I feel like this fell somewhat short of what it could have been. I wish we could have seen some more vulnerability from Lilia... she has this incredible life, has been through so much, but at times comes across as just a little too hard-edged or crochety. The pacing was a little off for me as well, but the prose and consistent insights made it worthwhile.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for this ARC.

I really love Yiyun Li, so this was a bit disappointing. This book is not bad, but long and slow. Those two things make the conceit strain a bit under the weight. Still, disappointment here derives from expectations (perhaps it always does), so I suppose this isn't a fair review.

𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐢𝐱 𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧, 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧, 𝐬𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠. 𝐘𝐞𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐤, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞.

Yiyun Li writes beautifully and in this novel it is the keen intelligence Lilia Liska carries within her aging soul that kept me deeply engrossed. She was never going to be background noise in her life, that’s evident from the beginning. When Roland Bouley’s diary is published, a man Lilia had a brief affair with, his entries set off memories of Lilia’s own life and the time they shared that could never be forgotten. Though not one for sentimentality, what happened between them gave birth to her future, making erasure of him impossible. As she turns the pages on his past, she annotates his passages with insightful diversions, things he never knew, her own perceptions of what occurred. She is often impudent but never foolish. Her curse and gift is the keen insight she was born with, and it began when she was young, understanding her own parent’s marriage and never wanting to be visited with the torment and misery the union offered her own mother. Determined not be ‘greedy for a happiness’ like her mother, that would never come- she knows it is better to rely on oneself, to steer her own ship. Nor would never be a breeding ground for disappointments, learning to let them pass by. This doesn’t mean her own children won’t inherit a suffering gene.

At 81 (don’t let that put you off, the elderly are capable of being interesting) she has collected memories, lost husbands, raised children, welcomed grandchildren and clung tightly to secrets, deciding for herself how much of her life she would share. Remembering is too exhausting, it’s all the old folks do, ‘reminisce’, but Roland’s words beg her history be written. They would all die and be forgotten, all the women Roland revered or discarded before and after Lilia, though we are all born to be forgotten, she must at least tell some things. It is the parts of her life Roland never had the chance to know that ended up being most important of all.

Roland and Lilia’s chance meeting begins at the Inn her family ranch has partnered with when she stands in for the help. A visitor, he is enchanted by Lilia. She may be young but not the sort of girl who has a heart primed for breaking. Too much a realist, she isn’t one to pine, to complicate any man’s life, nor her own. Roland has other women, of course he does, but why should that bother her? She is no tragic character, she refuses to be. What will she be, though, to Roland but an aside, L. in his diary?

This stolen moment is a catalyst for the full life that follows. Naturally, Lilia is familiar with grief, will see things and people disappear. As she allows her secrets to spill, we get to know her daughter Lucy, whose suicide has made Lilia feel like she has been abroad a sinking ship. Exploring her eldest child’s choices before her death opens up her own failings, and as Lilia traces her past it reveals the failures a mother can take on herself, left fearing maybe she was the cause. As hardened as she has had to be, in order to live without compromise, it isn’t without consequences. Are miseries visited upon us punishments or simply chance? Life does not always act accordingly yet the circus must go on. Those left behind have to stand in for those who’ve departed and don’t have the luxury of collapse.

Lilia is a seasoned, strong woman who decides she must leave her own record by piggybacking Roland’s, and it steals a bit of his thunder. Imagine if we could do as much, leave something when we’re gone, not as defense so much as our own perspective? There isn’t one story, is there? Why Roland’s self-centered diary/life, a man of fickleness and waning attentions are the steam Lilia needs to impart her witty reflections becomes apparent early on. One wonders how someone as dull as Roland (to my way of thinking) ever captured Lilia at all. This is a woman of searing intelligence, she has wounds but never allows them to fester and that my friends, is survival. Great read!

Publication Date: July 28, 2020

Random House

Wow, this is outstanding literary fiction--it is well written and thought provoking. And gorgeous writing too! Must I Go should and hopefully will be on the radar of those looking for insightful novels that explore the human condition.

I also hope the book's cover is not the galley one or if it is, please, please give it a better pb cover! The cover is not going to endear itself to casual book browsers.

An interesting/unique plot line that ultimately didn’t work for me. I found it a little rambling, and kept feeling that I had missed something.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“Lilia did not mind. A woman’s value in her opinion was not measured by the quality of men in her life but by the quality of the women in the lives of those men.’ -8
Wow-what an interesting idea... A new one I hadn’t ever heard articulated quite like this before. This has piqued my interest enough to read on.

I just love everything this author creates. This story was so rich and beautifully told, it made a perfect escapist read during these crazy times, I can't wait to share it.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Must I Go, albeit a rather slow burn. Lilia is an unapologetic, sharp-tongued 81 yr old lady who lived a full life. She had a brief, but unforgettable affair with Roland, who is the unwitting father of Lilia's first child, Lucy. Lilia raised Lucy and her four children that she subsequently had with her first husband, Gilbert. The first two parts of the story was her reflection of her life and especially her relationship with Lucy, who committed suicide when she was a young mother, leaving her only child, Katherine, in Lilia and Gilbert's care. Then Lilia decided to write a critique of Roland's memoir, having in mind that her granddaughter, Katherine and great-granddaughter, Iola as audience. Despite the fact that Lilia was just one of many mistresses that Roland had an brief affair with, she seemed to be obsessed with his love life (even though he was a selfish, immature womaniser who deserves no sympathy). She examined almost each entry of his dairies in details, compared herself to the other women, and inferred similarities between herself and the love of Roland's life, Sidelle, even though she had never met any of these women in real life. There was one thing that kept nagging me at the back of my head throughout the last part of the story; how awkward and strange would it be for Katherine and Iola to read this?

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.

"L looked perfectly willing to believe that we would meet again. Such confidence. She is too young to understand that it is almost always a miracle that two people meet. I'm too old to be taken hostage by any miracle." Must I Go by Yiyun Li is a complex story that explores how the intersection of two lives is random and miraculous and how that random miracle ripples out over a lifetime.

Lilia is a cynical, reluctant narrator of her own memoir as told through the reading of the posthumous diary of a 'when in town' former lover and unwitting biological father of her ill-fated daughter. Told in three parts, the first two engage you in the self-assured personality of Lilia and her on-off relationship with the diary writer. Lilia's perspective on the world, her matter-of-factness about circumstances, make her a fascinating and quotable character: "What about 'rest in oblivion'? Less pressure on both the living and the dead" and "To be seen by him was different than to be remembered. The moment you want to be remembered by another person you give him the power to forget you."

The third part is epistolary in structure with sections of the diary we are reading followed by Lilia's commentary. The story reaches way beyond Lilia, to the points in the diarist's life where her existence is irrelevant. I found this section harder to care about as it veered far from Lilia's life and followed the most unlikeable diarists.

In the end, I gave it four stars for Lilia's piercing observations and the bold complexity of the structure with several stories overlapping without any confusion. This is my first Yiyun Li novel, but I'm definitely going to seek out more.

Must I Go by Yiyun Li is a book about examining one's life and how we each get to own the narrative of our lives. When Lilia discovers her former (now-deceased) lover has written a memoir that includes details of their time together, Lilia fills in her own narrative. This provides a fascinating look at the role of memory and personal experience. It's a bit of a slow burn as a story, so if readers are looking for a quicker paced story, this may not be the best fit.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

This is certainly an original concept: memoir being critiqued by a former lover. It is also a study of differing personalities, how they complement and defy each other. Lilia presents for us a memoir of her own, by commenting on the autobiography she finds written by Roland, the father of her eldest daughter Lucy, who Lilia raises with the man she subsequently marries, Gilbert. The levels of convolutedness in this book don't so much entertain or impress me, they just make me tired.

I do love the fleeting descriptions of Orinda, California where I lived for one lovely year and where I wish now we had opted to remain. I am going through some personal shit that makes me quite interested in the subjects of adultery, age differences, and suicide, in an effort to understand how to deal with them and figured this book would give me insight, but while Li brings up all the ugly things, there is no wisdom or consciousness to be gained at the end from having wallowed through them.

While this is nothing like Li's other book I read Where Reasons End, the suicidal child theme is central to both. I love Kazuo Ishiguro whether he is writing about Japan or England, because he writes so perfectly, flawlessly fluently regardless of which cultural point of view he takes, and being half-Japanese I admire and appreciate that. Perhaps it's unfair of me to begrudge Yiyun Li's taking such a steadfastedly rooted Caucasian stance in writing Must I Go? Because she is Chinese and came to the US as an adult? Or when she writes "A mother is always a cautionary tale for a daughter" despite being mother of two sons and zero daughters. Why go to such lengths to exposit on what's not your own truth? There is no denying Yiyun Li is a great writer, who has gone through undeniably personal tragedy, I'll gladly keep reading her.

This would be a good pick for fans of HOUSEKEEPING or MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON. Although as a reader I am typically too impatient to enjoy a slow burn, for a different reader, this book may be just the remedy for the high-paced drama of our times.

Must I go, is the story of a woman, Lilia's life and the role of love in her life. After having grandkids and outliving her husband, Lilia unveils her once cherished affair with Roland from her diary and footnotes her memories with different versions of what could have happened. Lilia deals with loss, grief, and love in her own way and the author has captured those emotions beautifully. A great novel about the complex human emotions.
Thank you, NetGalley, Yiyun Li, and Random House publishing for the reader's copy of this novel. This review is based on my opinion and is not influenced in any way.

This book was so good! The characters were so well rounded, you felt like you actually knew them! The plot was so good you didn't want the book to end!