Le cose in natura semplicemente crescono

Six years, four months and nineteen days. That is the time span between the two suicides of Vincent and James, Yiyun Li’s two sons. Sixteen and nineteen years old. Two out of two. “There’s no right way to say it.” And the words crash against reality. The writing strips away all artifice; even fiction surrenders in the face of the inconceivable nature of death and the unspeakable nature of suicide. In fiction, there are alternatives: you can decide how events unfold. In reality, you cannot.

Following the loss of Vincent, Yiyun Li published "Where Reason Ends", an imaginary dialogue between a mother and her deceased son. "Things in Nature Simply Grow", winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize, is a memoir written for James. It was more difficult to find the right form for him, says Li. It could never have been a sentimental book. And indeed it is not. It springs from an abyss in which no parent would ever want or have to find themselves. Writing becomes a temporary refuge, an escape. Words remain the only way to make sense of existence, but they cannot save or resolve what is irresolvable.

A mother can do anything for her child, but she cannot keep them alive. She can go beyond love itself, because understanding and respect are even more important – even when faced with her children’s choice to die. This is ‘radical acceptance’: facing the inexorable reality of events without taking refuge in what might have been, without seeking explanation or comfort.

Nothing is sugar-coated. Death, suicide: words that cannot be softened or embellished with adjectives. Like Joan Didion in "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights", Li, in her writing on grief, focuses on thoughts rather than feelings. Faced with the irreparable, her reflective stance and the restraint of her language maintain a controlled distance which, paradoxically, heightens the emotional intensity.

But what remains of parenthood in the face of a child’s suicide? Living forever in the present moment, ‘definitive and concrete’ like an indivisible point. Learning to live in that abyss, with those deaths, until one dies, ‘not lost but found’. Grief is not a burden to be cast off. One loves it because it has taken the place of absence. There is no relief. There is no anger, but bewilderment and wounding. No rebirth or transcendence, no consolation or catharsis. “There are things in life that are unsolvable, and remain so.” And yet one must go on living.

Yiyun Li
, "Things in Nature Simply Grow
", NN Editore, 144 pp., 18 euros