Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025 LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2025 FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION 2025 ‘Unforgettable’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘Courageous’ OBSERVER ‘One of the most important books to be published in years’ SARA COLLINS A remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance from acclaimed Pulitzer Prize finalist Yiyun Li 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 both: 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 can: including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death. This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving. 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. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now.' Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li’s indomitable spirit. As seen in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, LA Times, TIME, and the Paris Review. ‘A memoir unlike others, strange and profound and fiercely determined not to look away’ NEW YORK TIMES ‘To state that this courageous book is a testament to love is an understatement. One is left altered by it’ OBSERVER ‘A story of loss that is unlike any other book I've read … an unforgettable monument to endurance’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘A profound look at how a parent continues to live in a world without her children’ TIME ‘There are few writers with Li’s power’ DOUGLAS STUART ‘The best book I have read this year’ DAVID NICHOLLS ‘An extraordinary book’ SARAH MOSS ‘I will return to it for the rest of my life’ CHARLOTTE WOOD ‘A manifesto of living, not dying, and of how we endure the most unimaginable things’ SINÉAD GLEESON ‘A book unlike any I've read, that brims with rare clarity and intelligence, with love and care. It will stay with me for a long time’ CECILE PIN

Praise for Things in Nature Merely Grow:

'To state that this courageous book is a testament to love is an understatementOne is left altered by it at the same time as desperately wishing that it had never needed to be written at all' Observer

'An unforgettable monument to endurance, one that offers a kind of fierce comfort' Sunday Times

‘Grief is a difficult subject to write about, but this devastating account of the suicides of Li's two sons is clear-eyed and unsentimental. It's a manifesto of living, not dying, and of how we endure the most unimaginable things’ Sinéad Gleeson, The Week

‘A formidable testament to a mother’s love … one of the most important books to be published in years’ Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton

‘There are few writers with Li’s power and this is a beautiful, unsentimental book that offers some understanding of coping with devastating loss. It offers a powerful human connection and I was reminded that this is why we write, this is why we read’ Douglas Stuart, author of Young Mungo

'I held my breath as I read, not because of jeopardy but because it’s such an astonishing high-wire act of writing and thinking and mourning … An extraordinary book’ Sarah Moss, author of Ripeness

‘Li’s astonishing record of how she has chosen acceptance over despair shows why artists among us sometimes offer more wisdom than any other spirituality’ LA Times

‘A profound look at how a parent continues to live in a world without her children’ TIME

'The power of Things in Nature Merely Grow resides in her refusal to pay obeisance to words' Harper’s Magazine

‘An impossible book, yet through Li’s deftness and determination she transforms the book into an intricate and nonlinear portrait of loss and love’ Chicago Review of Books

Yiyun Li is the author of eight works of fiction and two memoirs. She is the recipient of many awards, including a Guardian First Book Award, the Sunday Times Short Story Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, an International Writer Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a MacArthur Fellowship and a Windham-Campbell Prize, and she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Things In Nature Merely Grow was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780008753870
ISBN 10	0008753873
Title	Things in Nature Merely Grow
Author	Yiyun Li
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers
Year published	2025-05-22
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable