Few tragedies are as unspeakable: the suicides of a couple's two teenage children. The death of Yiyun Li's second son, James, six years after that of her firstborn, Vincent, is the subject she writes about with bracing philosophical clarity in Things in Nature Merely Grow. An earlier work about Vincent, Where Reasons End, was published in the form of a novel. This work, "the book for James," is a memoir that, she warns early on, is "about life's extremities, about facts and logic, written from a particularly abysmal place where no parent would want to be."
Although the act of writing is a default source of comfort for Li (Wednesday's Child), for whom words are "the only way I can make some sense out of this senseless life," one still admires what it must have taken to write this. She confesses multiple times that she is "in an abyss" after the boys' deaths. Personal details, such as that James was insistent on the aesthetics of pancakes, expecting that each one she made would be "formed like a letter not found in the English alphabet," are unbearably poignant. Throughout the book, she turns to works of literature and philosophy by writers such as Albert Camus, Joan Didion, and Rebecca West to help her comprehend her sons' decisions. "Life has stunned me," Li writes, "but I prefer not to give life the pleasure of boasting that it has defeated me." This may not be a comforting book, but it's vital and tenderly written. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer