Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

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Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li is the Pulitzer Prize-winning, National Book Award finalist memoir on living alongside profound loss after the deaths of both her sons. A searing, deeply intimate work of radical acceptance from an acclaimed author.

About the Book

Things in Nature Merely Grow is a remarkable and deeply intimate memoir by acclaimed author Yiyun Li, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir/Autobiography and a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. "There is no good way to say this," Li writes at the very beginning of the 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."

Rather than offering a conventional narrative of grief, healing, or eventual resolution, Li's memoir traces something different: how to keep living, thinking, and feeling in the aftermath of loss this profound. In the months following James's death, Li writes, gardens, keeps quiet company with cherished friends, and turns to the writers she loves, including William Trevor and Shakespeare, along with the works her sons themselves had read. She reflects on both sons' childhoods, and on her own difficult upbringing in Beijing, weaving together memory, philosophy, and daily life into a work that refuses easy consolation. As Li writes, "The verb that does not die is 'to be.' Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James." Told in spare, lucid, unflinching prose across roughly 200 pages, the book has been widely praised not for offering wisdom gained or a triumphant arc of recovery, but for its clear-eyed, defiant act of continuing to live and think alongside devastating loss.

Why Read Things in Nature Merely Grow?

• Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir/Autobiography: Recognized as one of the most significant works of nonfiction of its year.
• A finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction: Also winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.
• Written by a celebrated, award-winning author: Yiyun Li's body of work includes a MacArthur Fellowship, a PEN/Faulkner Award, and a PEN/Hemingway Award.
• A genuinely singular approach to grief writing: Moves beyond conventional narratives of healing toward something more honest and unresolved.
• Spare, precise, deeply considered prose: Widely praised by critics for its lucidity and emotional restraint.

About the Author: Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction, including Wednesday's Child, The Book of Goose, Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, The Vagrants, and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, as well as the memoirs Things in Nature Merely Grow and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of numerous major honors, including a Pulitzer Prize, a PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and The Best American Short Stories, among other publications. She teaches creative writing at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Who Should Read This Book

• Readers of literary memoir interested in profound, unconventional explorations of grief
• Fans of Yiyun Li's fiction and previous memoir, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
• Readers who appreciate spare, precise, deeply considered prose
• Book clubs and readers interested in award-winning contemporary nonfiction
• Those processing significant loss who may find resonance in Li's approach, when they feel ready for it

Why Buy From Us?

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Order now and experience this searing, award-winning memoir of survival and continuing to live alongside profound loss.