Kinder than Solitude is an intriguing book about three friends – teenagers during the 1990s and the era of the Tiananmen Square protests. Ruyu is an orphan who has been raised by her Catholic grand-aunts and at the age of 15 is sent to a Beijing high school. She is boarding at the home of Shaoi, a politically active university student, and her family. Living in the close neighbourhood is high-school student Boyang, a self-assured and intelligent young man, and his childhood friend Moran, an eager to please young woman whose feelings for Boyang have recently deepened.

Moran and Boyang befriend Ruyu and show her around the neighbourhood and school. The neighbourhood families show her every kindness, especially because of her orphan status, but soon realise she won’t willingly enter conversations or demonstrate emotion. In particular this infuriates Shaoi, who resents Ruyu’s emotional and political passivity.

The central event of the story, though, is the poisoning of Shaoi. Shaoi survives but is intellectually and physically disabled and requires 24-hour care. The poison is found to have come from Boyang’s mother’s university laboratory, which Ruyu, Moran and Boyang have visited together. The question of whether the poisoning was purposeful becomes almost secondary to the story of what happens in the ensuing years, and how each of the three characters deals with their feelings and memories. After the event, the three do not communicate, with the exception of an email Boyang sends each year reporting on Shaoi’s health.

Yiyun Li’s writing is delicate and she is able to capture her characters’ discomfort and awkwardness so their inner-lives are revealed. The themes of this novel – guilt, shame, the risks of intimacy and the cost of solitude – are beautifully explored.

Annie Condon