Things in Nature Merely Grow

In this intimate memoir, novelist Li (Wednesday’s Child) remembers her teenage sons, James and Vincent, after their deaths by suicide. Though she centers the account around James, who died more recently, Li recounts both boys’ lives with palpable love and paints complex, distinct portraits of each. Li writes of marking her time after James’s death with piano lessons, swimming, and gardening, and gradually coming to realize that death altered neither the facts about her sons nor her relationship to them. “In this abyss that I call my life, facts, with their logic, meaning, and weight, are what I hold on to,” she explains. “It’s not much, this holding on, and yet it’s the best I can do.” She also details childhood abuse at the hands of her mother and her own battle with depression, which she recalls with wrenching immediacy. Throughout, Li draws on references to grief in literature, including Shakespeare’s Richard II and Euripides, though she ultimately refuses to call what she’s going through “grieving” because it “seems to indicate a process that has an end point.” Readers who’ve dealt with their own tragedies will find comfort and understanding here. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (May)