A review by criticalgayze
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

emotional reflective medium-paced

3.0

Having read and loved Li’s previous book Where Reason Ends a couple of years ago, I downloaded this one from Netgalley impulsively. First, what I did not realize because I requested without reading the synopsis were the ways in which this book were so completely tied to that earlier work in the kind of devastating subject matter that is being undertaken here. Because of the trauma that is being disclosed here, it can feel difficult to critique the book; however, the author is putting this out for consumption as a work to be interacted with. My criticism of the book is that it feels much too soon after the events Li is grappling with. The thesis of the book is that it is the work. She is dedicating this work to the loss of her second child in the way that she created art reflecting on the loss of her first child; however, this work still feels much more tied to the loss of her first child than that of her second. Some of this may be tied to the allowances she gives us about that child’s reticence to be acknowledged, but I can’t help, but feel that some of that is an understandable, temporal inability to completely grapple with her experience.