Letters of Recommendation #5

Happy fall, my readers. Below I have for you three books about the mind and what happens when circumstance upends our presumed control of it. Enjoy :)

Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li
5.20.25 - NEW! (ish, sorry)
192 pp

Following Yiyun Li’s lead, I’ll start with the facts: this book is written for her son James, who she lost to suicide when he was nineteen. She lost her other son, Vincent, the same way seven years earlier, when he was sixteen. Things in Nature Merely Grow is a radically brave consideration of these two events. You’ll find its ethos on page 46: “Yes, I loved them, and I still love them, but more important than loving is understanding and respecting my children, which includes, more than anything else, understanding and respecting their choices to end their lives.”

It’s only through Li’s steadiness that the reader is able to comprehend the weight of these two losses. With herculean linguistic command, Li takes us through a year in her newfound abyss. My copy is littered with stars and arrows marking passages so poignant they make me feel like I’ve never in my life had a clear thought. While the book is almost as much about language as it is about life and loss, and I’m grateful to have read it now as I don’t think I’d have the stomach for it if I were ever to become a mother. I recommend this book not out of voyeurism but out of deep respect—you should read it because it’s an honor to watch one of the greatest writers of our time reach the apex of life’s extremity and see what they create with it. Things in Nature Merely Grow is remarkable.


Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
Rachel Aviv
9.13.22
288 pp

One thing doctors know for sure about mental illness is that there is so much they don’t know. Rachel Aviv was six years old when she was hospitalized for anorexia, yet it was only when she got to the eating disorder treatment center that she learned from the other patients (teenage girls) about the pursuit of thinness, like that exercise is tied to weight loss, or that one can make themselves voluntarily throw up. Six months later, the prospect of reuniting with her parents prompted her to begin eating again, and she was discharged.  While Aviv’s personal experience is kept in the prologue and epilogue, Strangers to Ourselves explores the relationship between one’s diagnosis, their surroundings, and their identity.

Aviv uses five people to illustrate the working theories behind this relationship: Ray, Bapu, Naomi, Laura, and Hava. I found the strength in Strangers to be in Aviv’s empathy to her subjects—she tells the story of their illnesses thoroughly, considering their culture, race, class, religion, desires, and identity as seriously as she considers their medical records. The reporting alone is a masterpiece, and when braided with leading theories on psychology and treatment, it becomes a text that shifts the paradigm around how we think about mental illness. Hats off!


Simple Passion
Annie Ernaux
Translated from French by Tanya Leslie
5.1.23
80 pp

“When he rang to arrange a meeting, his long-awaited call had no effect on me and I remained locked in the same state of anxiety as before. My condition was such that not even the sound of his voice could make me happy. It was all infinite emptiness, except when we were together making love. And even then I dreaded the moments to come, when he would be gone. I experienced pleasure like a future bain.”

I'd go so far as to say that Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux is the seminal text on yearning. In it, Ernaux documents her two-year, all-consuming relationship with a married "foreigner" and the effect it had on her perception of reality. Simple Passion is a serious book, which is refreshing when entrenched in my generation’s tendency to trivialize or even look down upon this type of infatuation (I’m thinking of the “delulu,” “down bad” of it all). The book is both delirious and delicious while remaining uncompromising and “clinically accurate,” as the Nobel committee dubbed Ernaux’s work when awarding her the 2022 prize. If you haven’t dipped into her oeuvre, this is a good place to start.