This may be the strongest and most impactful memoir I've read so far. Reading this felt like an exclusive look into her highly intelligent brain. This book doesn't exist to answer questions and ponder the "what-if's" that suicide survivors are often left with alongside immense grief. And this wasn't a book about grief, although Yiyun Li very well could have made this about grief because God knows that she's carrying enough of it. It wasn't a manual or guide to the steps of the grieving process and I'm so glad that it wasn't. This book was a celebration of Li's son's lives and their very beings that made them each unique and I enjoyed how she incorporated hers and their love of literature into it. As someone who has lost someone to suicide, I wasn't sure what emotions would surface while reading this, but it was also why I was drawn to request this title in the first place. I especially enjoyed the part where Li talks about well-meaning people and how they've come across while enduring loss and her description was spot on. Only those who have been there will understand. I haven't read Li's other works so THINGS IN NATURE MERELY GROW was my starting point, but I loved her melodic writing style and tremendous intelligence that seeps through every page. I will be a return reader.

In Things in Nature Merely Grow, Yiyun Li writes of the suicide of her younger son just a few years after the suicide of her eldest son. She shares much of her personal experience in a direct, genuine, and deeply honest way. I appreciated her bravery in telling her story and in attempting to enter the mind and experience of her son, as well. She does not hold back from recounting the full tragedy of her losses and the ongoing, daily reality of living without her children.

Despite the difficult topic, each time I had to put this book down, I looked forward to finding time to pick it up again. It's the beauty of the language and the absolute mastery in the writing, combined with the author's deeply insightful and reflective thoughts, that made this one of the very best reading experiences I have had in a long time. This is the third book by Yiyun Li I have read, and I feel even more compelled now to read all she has published to date.

Thank you to the publisher for the digital review copy.

Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow is a profoundly intimate exploration of tragedy, love, and the human ability to live alongside unimaginable loss. In this memoir, Li confronts the deaths by suicide of her two children — first her son Vincent in 2017 at age 16, and then her son James in 2024 at age 19 — and traces the shock, silence, and enduring questions that followed.

I think one of the main things that struck me about this memoirs was the way Li avoids framing her story in conventional terms of “healing” or “recovery.” Instead, her narrative finds form in small details — phone messages, a family dog, her children’s books — and in the elemental (often cold) process of a world that grows and evolves regardless of human tragedy. There’s a remarkable discipline in her writing; her style is clear, sparse, and precise, reflecting a mind trying to make peace with a chaos it can’t control.

Highly recommended.

i feel like i read a lot of dark books. every reader personality quiz i’ve ever taken says i like to read complex and introspective narratives, whatever that means. i think it just means that i should probably cry more.

if you are looking to cry, look no further than things in nature merely grow. in this book, yiyun li writes about her experience losing both of her sons to suicide. “there is no good way to say this” is oft repeated in this book and in reviews of it, likely because it’s true. how do you put words to something so tragic in a way that is “good” for anyone to hear?

to be quite honest, this is the most difficult book i have ever read. it is just sad, and it ruined me. yiyun li writes with such adoration and compassion for her sons. more than anything, this is a book about a mother who loved her children. and sometimes, that is just not enough. and it’s heartbreaking.

i paired this book with yiyun li’s recent new yorker pieces and would highly recommend doing so. her writing is just so thoughtful and beautiful, and i appreciated seeing how she has channeled her love for her sons into her work in various forms.

thank you to @fsgbooks for the arc!! i fear i will be thinking about this book every single day for the rest of my life.

A beautifully poignant book that, despite not being an exercise in emotion, is filled with so much tenderness it made me weep. Yiyun Li is one of the most thoughtful writers alive—whenever I pick up her work, I feel deeply engaged in an intellectual way. The way she writes here about such an intense type of grief was remarkably measured, even though she admitted to being bewildered and confused by that grief. Which makes sense, no? I can’t understand her specific pain, but through reading this book I understand the ways that grief is hyper-individual and destabilizing in myriad ways. And I only begin to understand the immense love that Li felt—and still feels, and will feel every single day for the rest of her life—for her sons.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the early look at this book in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Things in Nature Merely Grow was such a beautiful, heartbreaking memoir about a mother trying to come to terms with the sudden deaths of her two sons. She articulates the unimaginable pain so well, and hearing the personal details about each made everything even more tragic. I enjoyed many of Yiyun Li's novels and short stories, and her nonfiction - though obviously a tough subject - was crafted with the same crisp language and attention to detail.

Reading Yiyun Li is always difficult, precisely because of how real and raw her writing is. When I read the subject of this book, I knew this would be almost impossible to finish. And it was. I needed to keep taking breaks. All I can say is, what a gift Yiyun Li is to the world of literature.

Echoing what others have said, it doesn't feel quite right to be reviewing a book like this. I have previously read Li's novel 'Where Reasons End' and was taken in by her ability to write about such a tragedy so beautifully. The same goes for this book and I very much appreciated getting a window into an experience that very few people could even imagine going through.

This book is a touching and beautifully written memoir, in which Yiyun Li details the loss of both of her young sons to suicide.

I cannot begin to imagine the loss but reading this book was much more about how different her children, Vincent (16) and James (19), were and what she attributed their decision to end their lives.

It is a stunning memoir in more ways than one. As I tried to grapple with the idea of putting one foot in front of the other after the deaths I was utterly stunned by the chapter called "Minor Comedies - for James" in which she recounts some of the utterly staggering responses she received from friends, acquaintances, the media and total strangers. They left me open-mouthed at the callousness of some people who feel the need to offer their "wisdom" about her loss.

A beautiful and sensitive memoir that is touching and tender.

Very highly recommended.

a difficult book to both rate and review — but definitely one worth reading, despite the difficult (and even this is an understatement!) topic. one of my best reads this year!

Following the death by suicide of her oldest son, Vincent, Li set to work crafting a powerful novel of motherly love told through a dialogue between a grieving mother and her late son. Li writes that the novel“was as much written for Vincent as it was written by Vincent,” as it was crafted in his artistic and creative style.

When, 6 years later, Li’s younger son, James, died in the same manner, Li set out to write “the book for James.” However, she found that a work meant to honor this boy; in his logic, intelligence, and eccentricities, could not be a work of fiction, but needed to be radically honest.

Things in Nature Merely Grow is a work of “radical acceptance,” of Li’s grief. In it, she makes no meaning of her losses, but rather shares stories of her sons, her experiences with others in the wake of loss, and her tempestuous relationship with the written word, about which she says, “if one has to live with the extremity of losing two children, an imperfect and ineffective language is but a minor misfortune.”

Li’s approach to grief felt completely foreign to me. As someone who feels deeply, I struggled to imagine acceptance as a coping strategy, and I suppose that’s why it’s important to read. Yet at the same time, there were some sentences that felt wrong, primarily the ones that frame James’ death as a choice. Research shows that people who die by suicide do so because they do not see another choice. So while, yes, suicide is a choice in the way, say, a heart attack isn’t, framing radical acceptance as “respecting [one’s] children, which includes, more than anything else, understanding and respecting their choices to end their lives,” felt like an injustice. I can’t help but wonder if this statement creates a false narrative that those who die by suicide are choosing another path which we should simply accept.

We expect grieving mothers to act a certain way, and this is not my attempt to put Li in that box. Her experience and grief are valid, and her writing about it is epitomized in this statement: “Children die, and parents go on living— this, too, is a fact that defies all adjectives.” This novel made me feel deeply and think about grief in new ways. I’m so glad I read it.

I've never read a grief memoir like this. I felt like I was truly inside Li's mind and it resonated with me in countless ways. This is incredible.

yiyun li has been through more in one life than any one person should have to face, and the wisdom and clarity with which she writes about them is incomprehensible. i can't believe this book.

It is really difficult to review this book, it feels wrong to. What a woman Yiyun Li is and what a spectacular writer she is. I think her words in this book will stay with me for a long long time. A book I will return to and I book I will learn from. I cannot recommend it more highly. All my admiration and good thoughts to the author. Everyone should read this book.

This is one of the most unique memoirs about death I’ve ever read.

Things in Nature Merely Grow is about Yiyun Li’s experience mourning her sons’ suicides.

I really respect Yiyun Li’s bluntness. She has the distinct perspective of having not one, but two, sons die young in a horrible way, and I believe that perspective allowed her to fully open herself up to the reader in this book. Her writing style is beautiful and she has a very distinct voice. Even though this is the first piece of her’s I’ve ever read, I think if I was handed something else she’s written I’d be able to identify her voice instantly.

Although Things in Nature Merely Grow is gorgeously written I personally didn’t enjoy the matter of fact style it’s written in. This style is intentional on the author’s part, but it’s just not the style I like in memoirs. I also didn’t like how often she’d mention something and then completely brush over it. That’s also something I don’t like in memoirs.

Although I didn’t love it, I did enjoy it and I do recommend Things in Nature Merely Grow.

Over on my booktube channel (Hannah's Books), I shared this book in my description of exciting books forthcoming in May. Link to the particular discussion: https://youtu.be/4zoXuMKGD2A?si=SoEGbbK1RdHgcJei&t=662

The author writes that the events of her life and the loss of her sons would never happen in a novel; it’s too coincidental. The story is certainly heartbreaking and hard to even contemplate, but the author explores her thoughts and emotions in a literary and moving way that allows the reader to get to know her children.

I was most moved by the contemplations on motherhood and what it means about life that we cannot always keep our children safe. At times the structure of the book felt a bit uneven, but I suppose grief is an uneven process. I’m very curious to read the other book the author wrote for her first son, which I have in my library.

Having a young adult son, I could not imagine how Li was not paralyzed with grief when her eldest son, Vincent, died by suicide in 2017. Instead, she addressed her sorrow in a tender and moving book “Where Reasons End” in which a mother and her dead child continue their conversation. Li is confident that Vincent would have loved the book she wrote for him. Now, under the most unimaginable circumstances, the death of her other son, James in 2024, also by suicide, Li returns with another extraordinary book, although she is less confident that James, who evaded attention during his short life, and whom she “cannot conjure . . . up in any manner,” would be pleased with the result.

Li states that she and her husband are “in an abyss.” She knows that death, and particularly suicide, “cannot be softened or sugarcoated.” She is straightforward in her vulnerability, refusing to shy away from using the words “died” or “death,” or accepting that “love” will make everything all right, or putting her life in the hands of “thy god.” Instead, she has adopted the notion of “radical acceptance,” or “the fact that all things insoluble in life remain insoluble.” Although Li claims that “[t]his book is about life’s extremities, about facts and logic, written from a particularly abysmal place where no parent would want to be,” her feelings spill out on the page. She grieves although she respects James’s decision to take his own life and she endures that death, as she had done once before.

This is a haunting book that examines how a parent continues to live in the world without her children. She mourns, but she rejects the conventions surrounding grief. In response to the inquiries of friends, she replies, “Our life is never going to be all right again, but we are doing all right.” Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for an advance copy of this remarkable memoir which turns the traditional wisdom of turning to spirituality during grief on its head.

Thank you to NetGalley + for the ARC 🤍

As someone who’s read many books on loss and grief, I can say this one is filled with some of the most unique, brutal, and authentic perspectives I’ve ever encountered.

The author's inclination to lean into radical acceptance to honor the lives of her sons has stuck deep within me.

It’s as shockingly raw as it is insightfully beautiful.

Li, Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton, presents her memoir about her second son, James, and his death in 2024 at the age of nineteen. She honors James and his suicide by framing Things in Nature Merely Grow as an intellectually driven project, patterned after James’s natural disposition for logic and philosophy. The book does not grieve or mourn James’s decision, for Li finds grieving and mourning unsatisfactory vehicles to transport readers to the black hole inside her. Nor will she adorn the writing with extraneous adverbs, a stylistic choice she and James find philosophically unpleasant.

Instead, Li practices “radical acceptance.” She recognizes her loving efforts and inability to keep James alive, and she respects his decision to stop living. Knowing her reserved son’s volition, she conjectures he conscientiously considered existential questions about life, his instance of living, and the choice not to live: “Life, in an absolute sense, is worth living[.]. . . However, the fact that something is worth doing doesn’t always mean a person is endowed with the capacity to do it, or that a person, once endowed with that capacity, can retain it.” Through hypothetically recreating James’s private, internal thought process, her radical acceptance showcases an unnatural, as it were, response to losing James to suicide six years and four months after her first son, Vincent, to suicide as well. In memorializing James, Li continuously addresses Camus’s philosophical question: Is life worth living? James’s answer, in the wake of losing his older brother, leaves Li in an abyss.

In this life, the author will always—“every single day, for the rest of [her] . . . life”—reside in her new habitat, the abyss, which is sustained by writing. Remarkably lucid, Li writes about her intuition as a mother, her splintered relationship with her irascible mother, her mental health journey, and her distinct way of processing her two unique sons’ deaths. Also quite remarkably, Li shares how strangers, acquaintances, and the media (in America and China) responded to the events. It shocks me that we offer condolences with such little tact and care, and it frustrates me to watch the media scrutinize Li. In response, Li continues to live and work. She believes, “it is my job to tell them [her students] that sometimes poetic words about grief and grieving are only husks.” As natural as it was for James to grow until he “walked out of life as though that was the natural conclusion of the week,” so this parent continues living when her children die before their time.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC. I shared this review on GoodReads on May 19, 2025 (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7571070031).