Things in Nature Merely Grow

Yiyun Li's remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James. WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR MEMOIR/AUTOBIOGRAPHY. FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION. Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. 'There is no good way to say this,' Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book. 'My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.' Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: doing 'things that work,' including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.