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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today I have, as my guest, Yiyung Lee, I am very happy to see her again. She has written a profound book. Some are calling it

memoir, some are calling it essays. I'm considering it as a contemplation of the world from a perspective we don't all share.

I happen to share this perspective, I think many readers and writers do, which is an experience of

sadness, grief, loneliness, so strong that it brings us close to

an almost constant suicidal ideation and may even lead from time to time to hospitalization,

certainly to medication.

So this is a book of a period of the two years after Yiyun wrote her last novel.

Kinder than solitude.

We had talked about this book with great intimacy.

I didn't know what it took for you to write this book.

This book brought you closer to a self you did not want to acknowledge, yes?

Yes, and I didn't know I was going to write the book, and I also, I suppose while I was writing the book,

my thought was these words would never be read by anyone.

I was just going to write to confront myself, to question myself, and that's how I could start the book.

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