Exploring Things in Nature Merely Grow
by Yiyun Li
Explore the Book
Yiyun Li’s remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James.“There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.“There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.”There is no good way to say this—because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, “a single point in a timeline.” 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... The author demonstrates restraint in storytelling, choosing clarity and intention over excessive embellishment. This focus results in a narrative that feels purposeful and well-crafted. The book’s structure supports a smooth reading experience by clearly establishing its central ideas early on. As the story progresses, these ideas are revisited and expanded in meaningful ways. This layered approach gives the narrative a sense of depth, rewarding readers who pay close attention to recurring motifs and themes throughout the book.
