Having learned that Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li just won the Pulitzer Prize made me wonder what I rated it when I read it. And then, after much looking, I discovered that I never posted my review of it back in January when I read it. This is a deeply moving and heartbreaking book which is beautifully written and unimaginable as a parent. Amazon: “‘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 time line.’ 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: doing ‘things that work,’ 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 or mourning. 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.” While this book is very hard to read, it is also achingly beautiful. There is no way to give it less than five stars, yet it still feels weird to judge it at all.