“My husband and I had two children and lost them both,” she writes, and words can only “fall short”. James, a brilliant linguist studying at Princeton, where Li teaches creative writing, took his last Japanese class on a Friday. Things in Nature Merely Grow is by necessity profoundly sad, but in the act of sharing details of the “abyss” she now inhabits, Li has created something both inclusive and humane. Months before his death, he reread Albert Camus’ play Caligula “a bit obsessively”, and watched English, Spanish and Japanese productions of it online. There is no redemptive moment of healing here; things in nature merely grow, they are not automatically resolved, wounds are not neatly sutured.

Source: The Guardian February 11, 2026 17:11 UTC