Writing Things in Nature Merely Grow seems to be Yiyun Li’s way of stepping into a painful, almost otherworldly place, and planting her feet there, permanently.

This book is a memoir born out of unimaginable loss. Li lost both of her sons, Vincent and James, to suicide, at just 16 and 19 years old. Two young lives, gone far too soon. So yes, this is a book about grief.

She writes from a place so dark and so particular that most parents could never fathom standing there. She is upfront that the book won’t chase the questions readers might expect her to ask, and it won’t hand out the kind of closure we often hope grief narratives will deliver. It sits, instead, in the space of facts and extremities, a place where logic and feeling collide in the most devastating way. And if you’ve ever wanted to understand grief from that unfiltered angle, Li offers exactly that kind of window here.

One thing that made this book especially meaningful to me personally is Li returns to Camus throughout the pages, and Camus happens to be one of my all-time favorite authors. His worldview has always resonated deeply with me, and reading Li’s reflections gave me a whole new lens to see Camus through. It felt like discovering a familiar voice in an entirely new light.

Things in Nature Merely Grow is talking about grief was never meant to be. Yiyun Li writes with a ferocity and an honesty so stark it almost feels like an intrusion into something deeply private. For readers who are willing to sit with discomfort, with grief in its most unpolished form, this book is an extraordinary piece of literature. Pick it up with an open heart, and let Li take you somewhere most writers would never dare to go.

My Favorite Bits

• “The world, it seems to me, is governed by strong conviction and paltry imagination and meager understanding.”

• “One can write about facts feelingly, one can write about feelings matter-of-factly, but one should never evade facts”

• “Not calling a fact by its name can be the beginning of cruelty and injustice.”

• “Our life is never going to be all right again, but we are doing all right.”

• “The world seems to care more about children’s doings than about their beings.”

• “Is this life, which may be worth living, worth suffering for? If life is worth suffering for, should there be a limit, or should one have to suffer unquestioningly, all in the name of living?”

• “Vincent lived through his feelings, deep, intense, and overwhelming feelings, and he died from his feelings: a life worth living, in the end, did not prove livable; an acutely artistic and sensitive soul might not always have the means to prevail in this world.”

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Author: Yiyun Li
Publication date: 20 May 2025
Number of pages: 192 pages

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