RaveAvenueComposed in Li’s crystalline, unhurried prose, this world-sweeping tale — which has the texture and atmosphere of a fable — begins in, of all possible places, Lancaster, Pennsylvania ... In excavating the past, Agnès runs up against some questions so moss-covered that to even raise them here feels trite. But they have an urgent contemporary relevance, so here goes: Who has the right to tell a story? Can a narrative have a definite endpoint? How can we find happiness in difficult times? ... Li has again transfigured her personal tragedies into a piercing work of art. And while her characters, like the rest of us, can only poke around the edges of these unanswerable questions, there are, as in life, occasional moments of grace and clarity, when the fog vanishes and the answers appear.