If you are looking for a profoundly sad short story collection that gives rare insight into an author’s experience (yes, even through fiction), this is a strong perspective. I learned from reading this but it is devastating work. Be mindful of content warnings; here are my ratings and spoiler-free tidbits about each story:

Wednesday’s Child (Titular Story)
5 stars
Will upset me for a long time.

A Sheltered Woman
3 stars
Good characterization but I don’t think I got the familial lesson I was supposed to get from this.

Hello, Goodbye
3.25 stars
Some decent pandemic/family structure/generational difference/obligation things in here.

A Small Flame
3.5 stars
Whoa. I was really out on the protagonist but once things started clicking into place, this took on a whole new life. The writing in this is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dense with meaning.

On the Street Where You Live
4 stars
“The only option was to blunder on through hoping.”

Such Common Life
2.25 stars
Clunky and bloated.

A Flawless Silence
3.75 stars
This story gave me agita.

Let Mothers Doubt
3.75 stars
I need to know Yiyun Li’s real true connection to and opinion of the Benicia-Martinez bridge.

Alone
4 stars
Truly don’t feel I should comment or preface this—let each reader be taken on this journey since truth and reality are elements to this.

When We Were Happy We Had Other Names
2 stars
Missed the point of this one I fear.

All Will Be Well
5 stars
Something shifts in this story, which lives in the bounds of fiction, yet transcends it. It makes me ill.

While researching Yiyun Li's background and her connections to the Bay Area, I learned of the profound tragedies that have touched her family. Both of her sons died by suicide by train; this deeply colors her work. Her older son's suicide appears to be related to/inspire the titular story in this collection. That alone is devastating. Tragically, her younger son's similar death occurred just months after this collection was published. While not all the stories resonated with me personally, the raw authenticity and emotional depth in her writing are undeniably powerful. I extend my deepest condolences to Yiyun Li, and I am grateful for her courage in sharing these stories with the world.

What can I say besides I love Yiyun Li and everything she writes, Yiyun's stories are so rich with language and imagery. Wednesday's child is beautiful and meticulously crafted. These stories explore heavy themes such as loss, grief, and death. Though the themes are heavy Li's writing is delicate and carefully explores them.

This is a well written book, although the stories tend to blend together. There are some fine lines, a few well-conceived set pieces, a fair share of perceptive and insightful observations, and some lean dialogue. That said, try as I might I found neither the characters, nor their situations, nor the various narratives engaging enough to arouse or hold my curiosity and attention. As a consequence, it doesn't seem fair to write much more of a review, apart from encouraging inquisitive readers to give the book a try.

Last year I stumbled upon Yiyun Li's "The Book of Goose" after never hearing of it before, and I loved it so much. I was really looking forward to this new collection, but I felt that it fell a little bit short for me. After a couple months, I can't vividly remember any singular story in the collection that jumps out at me.

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux for allowing me to review Wednesday's Child on NetGalley.

Stars: 2.5

Not for me. I went through a host of emotions and not in a good way. I was confused, frustrated, and frankly annoyed. Some of the stories I followed and was left wondering what I just read. Other times I looked to see if I skipped a page.

The topics vary and are sensitive. This is a collection of stories for a thinker. I was in the headspace to be entertained and/or enlightened. This simply missed the mark.

3.75
I really admire Yiyun Li for writing (and so well) in her second language. I think I once read that she didn’t speak English until she moved to the US as an adult, but I could be wrong. My introduction to her was Where Reasons End, which I also admire for her willingness to be so open about the devastating topic of her son’s suicide – I understand she has also written about her own depression. All this is a preface to admitting I didn’t enjoy WRE (for reasons I had to go back to my review to remind myself of), but I find myself really wanting to like her work and therefore trying more books!

I did enjoy these stories, but I didn’t love them. Although the number of stories (11) falls within the range of what I consider the perfect number of stories in a collection, I found that the characters and stories seemed to merge, and I’m left with only an impression of what I’ve just read. Of course, a uniting theme creates a cohesive collection but here the themes of parents and children, love and loss added to the sense of the stories merging.

All this said, I’m happy to say that with each book (WRE, The Book of Goose, now this) I am enjoying Yiyun Li’s work more. Perhaps the short stories are a better fit for me, and I would like to try her memoir next.

Thank you NetGalley and FSG for this ARC.

Wednesday's Child is a short story collection. The writing and the portrayal of so many so different characters was lovely. I think it's very difficult to create so many stories with similar themes like grief or family and still manage to differenciate so many characters so much. I really enjoyed the Yiyun Li's clear voice and straightforward storytelling. Of course, in a short story collection it is to be expected that you will not love every single one, yet I really enjoyed most of them. I will definitely seek out the author's novels!

First of all, I'd like to sincerely apologize to the publisher for how egregiously late this feedback is being sent out, well over two months since the publication of the book. I'd like to thank Netgalley and FSG for this ARC despite the fact that I read it so late.

Now, on to the review.

I've never read anything by Yiyun Li but she's an author that I have been interested in reading for some time. The cover of this book is great, many flowers to Na Kim for being an incredible cover artist who can make literally anything a baller cover. When I saw Li was coming out with a collection of short stories, I thought: Why not? It would be a nice way to get acquainted with her writing, especially considering that about 90% of these stories appeared in the New Yorker at some point.

I think this was a solid collection of short stories, and it is incredibly clear that Li knows how to write, knows how to string sentences together and beyond that, tell incredibly compelling stories of incredibly complicated narrators attempting to make sense of their current situations. The stories are all elegant and restrained, and so incredibly well-written. There's a smoothness to her prose that I really admire, and I think it's something to maintain that elegance throughout the collection.

However, I think there were moments in these stories where I was wanting the elegance and the beauty and the restraint to slip a little. I wanted a moment where the characters were ugly and the prose slipped into ugliness, and I think there were plenty of moments within the stories in which that could happen, especially when a character was confronted with an unsightly truth about themselves or their lives or the lives of the people surrounding them. Every character felt as controlled as the prose itself and it had me wondering if Li outlined her short fiction in advance, like she had every beat and plot point micromanaged down to the dialogue. Nothing wrong with that, however if that is the case, it showed a bit more glaringly in some stories than others. I think if the characters and the stories and the prose itself played a bit more, this collection would've sung the highest. I say this also because of the distance Li places between the reader and the characters themselves, meaning that I felt this was a very detached and cold book without much interiority on the characters' parts in terms of me having access to their inner emotions and whatever turmoil they may or may not have been going through at a given moment. Here, I think Li could've played a bit more and allowed even some melodrama to slip through to make the story breathe a bit more and feel more alive.

My favorite stories in the collection were "Alone" and the only first person story in the collection, "All Will Be Well."

Thank you once again to Netgalley and FSG for the ARC! <3

Wednesday's Child presents heavy stories dealing with grief, suicide, and motherhood. I loved Li's ability to show nuance in grief in general and the grief from losing a child. Li certainly has a talent for portraying sad situations with compassion.

The author places you right in the middle of the lives of her story's characters, smack-dab in the center, doesn't help you understand their actions, but rather leaves you puzzled, not knowing where you stand or where you are headed, and that suits her just fine.

I love this style and I love this kind of confusion. except for one point that disturbed my enjoyment, the author places you in the middle of the story indeed, but she also leaves you there, leaves you longing for more, eagerly anticipating a sequel that would satisfy your curiosity, yet she never does, she never satisfies you ever.
I don't mind that in one story, or two stories, okay three.. but not when I wish most of the stories – if not all of them – were full long novels instead of a collection of short stories.

I don't like how as soon as I dive into a certain story, with its characters and events, I'm forced out of it and presented with a new story, with completely different characters and events. This transition leaves me unsettled, unsettled, and few can transition from a short story to another with good ease, that alone is a great skill that's hard to master.

This is a clever collection of stories. If it weren't for its confusion and occasional wanderings in what it's trying to say, the difficulty in switching from one life to another, and its inability to let the reader feel satisfied, one ended and another about to begin, it would have been a perfect piece.
I finished this work happy to have read it, sorry for its shortcomings, and sure I would return to the author in a long story, perhaps the expansive spaces and long pages would satisfy me, and perhaps they would leave me happy without any sorrows.

One of the most thoughtful and rich collections I have read this year. The theme is there but subtle. The stories are well-crafted and detailed.

WEDNESDAY'S CHILD by Yiyun Li is a collection of eleven short stories. Li takes on provocative topics, with motherhood and the female experience especially front and center. What does it mean to be a mother? What does failure or success look like? How do we protect ourselves, or must we be vulnerable, with all that entails? What does life consist of, after loss?

I was drawn into the worlds that Li created, invested in the characters and feeling the range of emotions. She has great skill in her muted word choices and scenarios. She isn't flashy or distracting as she paints these worlds, all the more showing her skill and imagination.

Yiyun Li has a captivating writing style, and I cannot wait to read her earlier works. 4.5 stars.

(I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.)

Enjoyed my time in the company of this short story collection, also my first experience of reading anything at length by Yiyun Li bar a New Yorker piece here and there, possibly even a work included here. Apart from one, all of the stories in this collection have previously been published elsewhere.

Her writing is lucid and piercing, often reaching deep into the depths of a particular experience, exposing what is held close by people just wishing to live ordinary lives. It is this quality that hits, the power in a quiet sentence unleashed with a sentence that seems outwardly plain, but carrying the weight of what has been shared leading up to that moment. An honesty that hurts all the more for its intimacy, even without blood being spilt on the page.
▫️”With depth always comes pain.”

It is a response that is the sum of different parts; rituals of culture, because we move and it is easier that way, especially as an immigrant with the chance for a fresh start, and because there has been plenty of practice in getting to this point. That’s not to say any of it is numbed with time, the force of memory is an onslaught that brings the intensity back. As happens with grief, a central theme threading these stories together. Grief for lost hopes, for the secret selves unrealised, for people who have left, for beloved children whose continued absence is unbearable; there is never an endpoint. Another central theme is grief’s weak balm, the art of story as a means of keeping the fire of memory alive.

Wednesday's Child is wonderfully written. A book of stories about loss and how it can affect you in so many ways. The words carefully chosen by Li make this work remarkable and truly melancholic, like a sad song you cannot help but remember in fond memory.

This book left a lasting impression that I will not forget. Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader copy.

I am a big fan of Yiyun Li’s writing and I’m happy to say that this is another excellent entry to her list of books. As per usual, her writing is lovely and descriptive. The themes of grief, loss, and aging that are explored in the stores are deftly handled. The book has a very poetic and almost meditative effect. If you enjoy a short story collection and literary fiction, you will likely enjoy this one!

What a beautiful, melancholy, honest, and finely crafted collection of stories this is! Yiyun Li crafts sentences with a careful eye towards the tragedy and comedy of human life. This collection of stories feels so real and fully realized. This is my first time reading a work by Li, but I've become an instant fan and can't wait to go back and read "The Book of the Goose

Yiyun Li has always been one of my favorite short story writers, but in the past five or six years she has gotten so much deeper and profound. She has experienced loss that I cannot comprehend. Wednesday's Child is a new collection of short stories where so many characters have experienced significant loss as well and are living in the aftermath with all of the after shocks. The title chosen for the collection suggests that this will not be a happy collection, coming, as it does, from the old nursery rhyme that has the line, "Wednesday's child is full of woe."

Indeed, the title story, the fist in the collection, is about a mother, Rosalie, a few years after her fifteen-year-old daughter took her own life. It's so sad. Yet somehow the collections doesn't brighten up after this opening.

This could sound dour and miserable, but for me it was somehow still a positive experience. Li is great at writing about grief, despair, and how those don't just go away. Her ability to compassionately write about such a state of being is enough to make these stories strong and important. But she allows that there are still ways to find support and connection.

A beautiful, heartbreaking short story collection - I adored every story, and many of them will stay in my consciousness for a long time. Li has such a talent for character development and theme

I read The Book of Goose and adored it, so I had to pick up Yiyun Li's new short story collection. I couldn't fault it. I need to go back and read everything Yiyun Li has written.

The stories speak through history framed by modern life. Conveyed through anecdotes and conversations, the familiar is presented in original ways, leading with simplicity and expanding in depth. I felt close to every story, like l'd known the characters for years, yet there was also a space to Lis writing, a distance that allowed me to wonder and draw my own conclusions.

Li explores family dynamics, particularly motherhood and marriage, but also friendship and purpose. She confronts gender roles, ableism, aging, mortality, and class, mostly from American-Chinese perspectives.

There's a ghostly quality to Lis writing, a quiet, profundity that will stay with me.

These stories are just as vivid and beautiful as Li's previous work. The grieving mother story is the best short story I have read in years and it feels like it has become a part of me. These stories about love and loss are cementing Li as one of my very favorite authors.