Must I Go is a novel built on an interesting concept: Lilia Liska, an 81 years old woman living in a retirement house, spends her free time writing annotations in a 700 pages long diary of her former lover, Roland Bouley. Although Lilia had a fling with him in her early days, she is only mentioned there a couple of times by her initial letter. Roland was never informed that a daughter had been born out of this affair.
The family’s and personal stories are intimate and multi-dimensional: sometimes reading Must I Go is like eavesdropping on a conversation that was never supposed to be heard. One of the greatest aspects of this book is pinpointing the differences between two points of views of the same event. Yiyun Li embarks on the same tough subjects as one may know from Where Reasons End, one of her most praised works.
Must I Go neatly presents the beautiful prose of the author and forces the reader to (self)reflect. It’s a perfect novel for all fans of psychological nuances and not-so-obvious storyline.
