Wednesday's Child: Stories (2024)

What makes a short story good? I'm a little confused because I enjoyed reading this collection, but every story felt like a promising beginning for a novel. Rarely did it feel like the story was completed. It does make me want to read an actual novel from Yiyun Li, who surely had the best book among this year's Pulitzer Prize finalists, even though I'm not sure if the stories were 'good' or not.

"Once you knew a slice of someone's story, you wanted to understand more, she thought."

The central theme of the collection is motherhood, but I think it would be unfair to put all these stories in one box.

"Parenting was a trial. The lucky ones were still making a case for themlseves, with cautious or blind optimism."

I know that there is a lot of resistance to short story collection, but try one or two.

""What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?" Alice asks...She might as well have asked, What is the use of a life without pictures or conversations?"

My favourites were the title story and Such common life.

This is a beautiful collection of short stories about love and loss. The relationships in the book are often quite strange ones and involve the strange past lives of those involved.

My favourite had to be the longest story "Such a Common Life" which was about the intertwined lives of two women - Dr Ditmus and her carer, Ida. It covers their pasts, their loves and their immediate future plans. I say this was my favourite but Alone was very close to that. In this story we meet Suchen who has left her husband and has a definite plan but she knows only too well that plans can go completely differently to the way you wish.

As I said, the writing is beautiful and evocative . Yiyun Li has such a light touch with descriptions and language. It was a pleasure to read even though the subject is dark.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to read short stories that don't particularly go anywhere, rather describe a slice of someone's life at a critical time.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the advance review copy.

I will confess that Yiyun Li is one of my favorite authors and therefore I am likely to be a biased reviewer. I believe she can do no wrong and I’m happy to report that is the case with this excellent collection of short stories.

While this is not one of those collections of interconnected stories, it is nonetheless a very cohesive collection. The stories belong together and work exceedingly well in the overall reading experience. There were standouts for me and not a single throwaway. The stories all share related themes. Li explores the effects of loss, grief, guilt, loneliness, and alienation. Several stories involve the death of a child, a tragedy that Li has experienced personally and written about previously. If this sounds too depressing, rest assured, Li skillfully balances the sadness with humor. That is simply how life is. There were many times I chuckled and even laughed out loud. One of Li’s greatest strengths is the characters she creates. She does it with empathy and understanding. They can be quirky at times, but always believable. Then there is the writing - controlled, beautifully rendered prose. Biased as I may be, everything works here.

My thanks to NetGalley and FSG.

The short story Wednesday’s Child was stunning - 5 stars. But the rest of the collection was a slog to get through.

Wednesday's Child (is full of woe). What a lovely evocative title for this collection of short fiction from an author who, based on this and only one other book, has become one of my favorites. There is so much beautiful imagery and language in each of these stories, but many share a commonality in the presence of a character (most often, a woman) who has immigrated from China. There is a death or an early trauma. And what they mostly feature is a current tipping point in life with backstory filled in. But no future. We do not learn their fate or the result of their choices. I plan on reading her earlier work. She's that good.

After reading The Book of Goose (twice) I have been looking forward to reading more by Yiyun Li. These stories are wonderful and heartbreaking. Death and often suicide play central roles in many of them. The stories and characters have similarities with the author’s own life, but that is to be expected. Many of the stories focus on one or more individuals born in China who have immigrated to the U.S. The characters are complex, the stories are draw you in. I easily could have taken as much time thinking about each story after I finished it as I took in reading the story. Every one of these stories would be excellent book club fodder, producing a lengthy and engaging discussion.

In the story When We Were Happy We Had Other Names, Jiayu and Chris have two children, a daughter in college and a son they recently lost to suicide. Jiayu and Chris are grieving. You can see they are grieving together, but they are also each grieving on their own. They have no answers as to why their son did this; they had no indications of what was coming. Jiayu is finding her way through her grief, not really knowing how, but by doing what comes to her. She has made a list of people who she knows have died. With some of them she takes time to remember their lives and the impact that person had on her life. In the process, she revisits her memories of her grandfather, a unique man and an important part of her childhood.

Yiyun Li makes me think as much as any writer I read today. Her stories never provide easy answers, and often there is no clear resolution.

There are no repeating characters or settings in this collection of short stories, but Li has made them all feel as though they belong together, with repeating themes and tone. Even though they fit together, each one is memorable and distinct in its own right. I don’t know how Li continues to knock them out of the park, but I hope she keeps doing it.

Loss, loneliness, and alienation. Li knows how to explore these topics and make them absolutely beautiful to read about. Devastatingly human.

Some stories were more deeply impactful than others, but “Such Common Life” is an all-timer; one of the best stories I’ve ever read.

Second book I’ve read from Li and I’m in love.

Wednesday's Child is so beautifully crafted. A set of stories about grief and how it bursts out in so many ways. Even though the stories range from melancholy to truly sad, the careful word choice by Yiyun Li creates almost a song, a lullaby, a dirge. I did not know if I would enjoy this story collection but I did very much.

Li has lived much of what she writes and that makes it even more poignant. She is an incredible writer and her work will haunt your dreams! If you love true literature, Wednesday's Child is for you!

In the year 2012, novelist Yiyun Li tried to take her own life. She wrote about the experience in a series of essays. Months after the book came out, in 2017 Yiyun Li’s 16-year-old son stepped in front of a train and killed himself.

After experiencing this kind of intense personal pain and unfathomable loss, it isn't easy to imagine the author embracing topics that stray from loss and death. Indeed, in her short story Alone, she writes, “When the dead departed, they took away any falsehoods that they might have allowed us to believe while alive; we who are left behind have to embark on a different life since the dead are no longer here to help us.”

The different life she alludes to is a life where people understand that terrible things happen all the time, and when moral or intellectual passivity may be preferable to a life of anguish. The author states, “True grief, beginning with disbelief and often ending elsewhere, was never too late.”

In this collection, the “child who is full of woe” – Wednesday’s child – is omnipresent. In the first collection that bears the title, Rosalie, who lost her daughter to suicide when she was 15, takes off to Europe as the COVID-19 pandemic rages outside. Rosalie’s mother ushers in a harsh verdict: “Any time a child chooses that way out, you have to wonder what the parents did.” Rosalie’s solace is that her love for her own daughter was kinder.

“Alone” is a breathtaking story. Suchen, whose past is haunted, is in an Idaho ski resort where she meets an older loner named Walter. Suchen’s marriage is falling apart and Walter? He is in the throes of grief after his wife past away earlier that year. Suchan reveals that at 13, she and five close friends made a suicide pact; only she survived. In an echo of “Wednesday’s Child”, she tells him, “You want to ask why. Everyone did. The truth is I could not answer that question at the time and I still can’t answer it.”

In “When We Were Happy We Had Other Names”, we encounter Jiayu and Chris arranging funeral services for their son, who died by his own hand. She reflects, “The death of a child belonged to a different realm – that of a Greek tragedy or a mawkish movie." Understanding that grief was often disbelief, she takes to listing everyone she met who is now dead, and learns something about her grandfather and the legacy of grief.

This reader suspects that the last story, “All Will be Well”, is the fulfillment of the author’s promise to her hairdresser, who wished the narrator to write a romantic novel about her and her first love. The enormity of her requested task weighs on her as she recalls she could not write a note to her children, required by their school to soothe them in the event of a catastrophic earthquake. “All will be well, all will be well, and every kind of thing shall be well, yet I could not even write a lying note to console my children.”

Words fail. Life is unknowable. Grief is in a whole different realm. But somehow, Yiyun Li weaves together stories that dive into the meaning of mortality and the reasons to trudge on.

Wednesday's Child is full of woe, but what truly makes this collection shine is the degree of compassion and control with which Yiyun Li here explores interiority and human connection. At the heart of each of these ten stories – written over the course of fourteen years – is the idea of life after loss: often, this is the death of a child, as in Where Reasons End, but Li's thoughtful, measured prose also traverses other forms of bereavement. Each story is deeply introspective even as it features rich dialogue, with characters who variously shed light on motherhood, carework, divorce, infidelity, sexual abuse, and immigration, meditating on identity, belonging, and death in deeply and often unexpectedly poignant ways.

Each of Li's protagonists – Chinese-American women with detailed backgrounds but no real sense of, or for, a future – are distinct but mired in variations of a similar quagmire, which lends the collection an easy sense of cohesion that I really admired. In addition to the titular story, which was first published in The New Yorker, my favourite was "Such a Common Life." The longest in the collection, this latter story features the relationship between an elderly entomologist and her carer, and synthesises all the aforementioned themes with a generous dose of humour.

I loved how seamlessly Li weaves insights on Chinese immigrant culture in stories that are so distinctly American. She also has a particular knack for endings, and though her style is not minimalist by any stretch, it reminded me somewhat of Raymond Carver.

Overall, this is a stunning collection, a masterclass in craft that I came upon accidentally and am genuinely pleased to be recommending.

3.5 stars

Huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher FSG for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Times Reads tok for the physical copy
TW: grief, suicide, racism, violence, abuse, depression

Wednesday Child by Yiyun Li is an incredible collection of short stories with delicate exploration on grief, loss and death. With 11 short stories, each with their themes are impactful in their own ways to a reader like me. I was overwhelmed with various emotions from sad to melancholy, to laughing at some absurdness to crying over the loss, this collection proven is now slot to be one of favourite read this year for me.

I have heard so much about Yiyun Li and yet I have never read her works until now. Upon reading the first story in this collection, I was caught up in her grief, the grief of a mother on the loss of her child to suicide. Before I read her work, I was aware of her real life story of her own loss, her son to tragic departure which reflected in another work of her, Where Reasons End. Knowing this changed so much of my perspective and experience in reading. It became more profoundly apparent how grieving the characters are in here may or may not reflected some of Li's own pain and sorrow. With stories as the titular title Wednesday's Child open on the mother's journey to coping by taking trips around the world after her daughter's suicide and "When we were happy we had other names" of a mother jotting down names of people in her family who passed away in remembrance after her son's death.

Loss is inevitable. All living beings will pass away sooner or later. But when loss came in the crashing form of losing loved ones to suicide, this is painful beyond words. I can feel the sadness, the pain in each lines she wrote. I was enraptured in her stories of loss and grief, of living and dying, of being and unbeing, its the magic of life and the devastating death. From the grief of losing your daughter to suicide as a mother took a trip to recover from loss, an experienced Chinese nanny taking care of an infant in his first month for a family, a woman returned to China after years of living in the State, the struggle of a mother caring for her autistic son, an accomplished woman in China but become the caretaker for an old scientist, a mother who recorded every deaths she know into a spreadsheet to cope with her son's suicide. Some of the stories dealt heavier on topic of passing away and death, one that doesnt get glossed over for how sorrowful and decapitating they can be. With the author's right balance of emotions in the writing, this collection was profound and intriguing to read.

1. wednesday’s child
2. a sheltered woman
3. hello, goodbye
4. a small flame
5. on the street where you live
6. such common life
7. a flawless silence

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anthologies & short story collections, 2024
1. wednesday’s child, yiyun li

WEDNESDAY'S CHILD by Yiyun Li, is read by the author and left me feeling quite contemplative.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is a collection of stories that thoughtfully and compassionately delves into the heavier topics.

The title was compelling, as I am a Wednesday's child, and I am not averse to a more melancholy read. This collection certainly has that aspect, but there are real moments of tenderness and insights within, that it doesn't become too much. Rather, it is a gentle, though sometimes brusque exploration of loss in various forms.

There are a lot of end of life issues inside, and one may want to prepare for those, especially surrounding suicide.

I felt this was a beautiful written book. I enjoyed the change of genre and style, and especially the perspective from a Chinese heritage. I often enjoy when the author narrates her own books, as she is able to give emphasis where she envisioned it.

Thank you to @netgalley @macmillan.audio & @fsgbooks for sharing this ALC with me and asking for my thoughts. This will be published on September 4th, and I definitely recommend it for those looking for a deeper read.

This is my third Yiyun Li and the first short stories I ever read by her. I enjoyed them... But found them less magical and mysterious than her novels, which I found so intriguing and kept thinking about for days. These short stories - some could be called vignettes - were lovely but due to the brevity of the format lacked a solid plot and felt a bit empty at times. I really liked the titular story and "Hello, Goodbye" in particular. It was enjoyable but not where I would start if I had never read Yiyun Li before.

3.5 rounded down.
Free ARC sent by Netgalley.

I can’t imagine reading something written by Yiyun Li and not liking it. It took 14 years to write this book of stories and it took me 11 days to read them. My two favorite stories are Wednesday’s Child and All will be well, the first story and the last one. The first gives whole Mrs Dalloway vibes in the writing style, which surprised and mesmerized me. In the last one I feel like I’ve gotten a real chance of meeting the author herself, it moved me greatly, but I was also taken in by the style and the fine first person storytelling.

a stunning collection. review to come

i'm not going to be able to describe this well, but as I was reading these stories I sometimes felt like what I was reading was the very surface, like an image reflected on pond, and underneath was another story that if I was smarter and more cognizant I would be able to pull out from below. li is an incredible writer, able to nestle sharp little moments in larger unwinding structure.

favorites: wednesday’s child, a sheltered woman, let mothers doubt, when we were happy we had other names

“When she moved on to the next place, she would leave no mystery or damage behind; no one in this world would be disturbed by having known her.”

A touching, beautiful collection. I’ve only read two of her books, and now this one confirms that I need to read everything she’s written.

The few stories that revolved around recent events—Trump’s election, COVID—were the least interesting to me. I think we’ve just seen so much written about these topics that they can’t possibly have anything new to offer. But, other than that, a perfect collection.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance copy of this book.

This short story collection was moving, reflective, and thought-provoking, but I have mixed feelings about it. While some stories were interesting, some others fell flat as they weren't very engaging to me as a reader.

i knew this would be so good

I don’t think Yiyun Li is a short story writer.

These short stories are sad but unsentimental, often written about a character whose initial shock of grief has evolved into something more complicated. A few of the stories (the title story and Alone) are knockouts and the book is a coherent collection despite being written over a 14-year span.

I’m happy I went back to reading Li so soon after The Book of Goose and will keep going through her back catalog now because she’s the real deal.

"Wednesday's Child" is Yiyun Li's collection of short stories spanning 15 years' worth of writing, and a must-read for fans of this author. Though the stories aren't connected to one another, they traverse similar landscapes of loss and a yearning for connection, be they between strangers who meet at a chance moment or between family members who have drifted apart due to several circumstances.

Those who have read Yiyun Li's works would feel right at home within the pages of this collection, as her writings are evocative and lovely as always and you can see her personal touches within the stories by imbuing semi-autobiographical facts of her life into the narrative. In a way, many of these stories seemed to be Li's way of purging her demons through literary fiction; "Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life" is another instance of Li's tendency to write about the difficult things she has personally faced in her life.

My personal favorites are "A Sheltered Woman" (a story I'd read before as it has been published separately) and "Such Common Life", but if I'm honest almost all of the stories resonated with me in some way or another. But then again, I am a biased fan of Li's writing, so do take my high recommendations with a grain of salt lol.

"Wednesday's Child" presents a great sampling of Li's writing for those who may be curious about her books, and though it might not be the best introduction to her oeuvre, I'd recommend this for those who loved "The Book of Goose" and want to be immersed within her lush writing once more.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this gorgeous book. All opinions are my own.

Wednesday’s Child is a lovely collection of stories to take your time with. There are somber themes involving grief, the examination of past choices, and how well we know (or don’t know) ourselves and others. Li was already one of my favorite authors, and this collection did not disappoint. Recommended for fans of Li, short stories, or reflective works.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing a digital review copy.

How chilling to know that the titular story that opens this scintillating collection mirrors the author’s own set of bereavements.

Yiyun Li would never have thought her own short story would prefigure what happens to her own child in February 2024, and that the circumstances would have been so similar. What is even worse is learning she had already lost another child to suicide in 2017, which formed the subject of a 2019 novel, “As I Gather”.

It is unimaginable how the author copes with these harrowing losses and continues to churn out her stories, each tinged no doubt with sadness, but never of the self-indulgent or self-pitying sort. Instead, there is a sense of stoicism as each character braces herself (invariably women) for the next blow as she ponders the consequences her life choices or choices made for her.

There’s Aunt Mei, the confinement nurse in “A Sheltered Woman”, who is careful not to stay longer than the one-month contract with all her charges, all 131 of them, ostensibly to keep her business going, but perhaps not to become too attached to these babies and their families.

In “Hello, Goodbye”, Nina’s precocious 12-year-old daughter tells her that “things will go right for us if we’re lucky, things will go wrong if we’re not lucky, there is nothing you parents can do”, when discussing a schoolfriend’s misdemeanour. Perhaps this mantra helps maintain a kind of balance in the role of parents. In the same story, Nina ponders when her friend Katie reminds her of her cousin’s death in his sophomore year, “How strange… that after a young life ends people think and talk about the death more than the life. It is easier that way: tragedies and catastrophes always have an ending.” She reasons, “harder to communicate… was the enduring unhappiness”.

In some of these stories, characters are displaced and in search of connection. In “A Small Flame”, Bella revisits China with her American childhood friend Peter and his French-Canadian boyfriend Adrian, a writer who was tracing his family history to China through his great-grandfather, whom he only knows has the surname “Li”. Bella is irked by “blue-eyed, pale-skinned” Adrian’s “romances [he creates] for his characters and himself in the places he had the remotest reason to claim.” Bella reasons that “people without genealogies… were like weeds, their existence of consequence to no one but weed killers. Perhaps that was why any reasonable person would try to locate a family root or two.”

Despite some of these characters’ cynicism, the heartbreaking truth was the devastating loneliness they feel, which is revealed for instance in “On the Street Where You Live.”In it, Becky, mother of an autistic child, keeps a journal about the people she meet, because “people around her were like lights in a house: the more, the merrier; the more, the less space left unlit.” Alas, the loneliness is unquenched even when meeting people facing similar issues because “people in the same boat… often found more reasons to judge and denounce.” In that story, Yiyun Li brings a startlingly astute observation about how exploitative it was to get a special-needs child to express beauty for which he has no understanding of through Becky’s reaction to a music lesson:

“Becky felt furious - at Vivien, who used William’s voice to make something beautiful, when this beauty was of no use to the boy; at Vivien’s mother, for wiping away her tears because she, who must have suffered plenty, had the luxury of being moved by this unnatural beauty; and at herself, too, for being there, a witness to a crime, an accomplice, really. They had all made this moment into a memory for themselves without William’s permission; they have meaning to something he would not attach meaning to.”

The rest of the stories in this compelling collection invite the reader to take pause and reconsider human suffering, and what it is to survive and even thrive in less-than-ideal circumstances. A solid 5 stars.

I had not read this author before, and after Wednesday’s Child, I couldn’t wait to read her other book, especially The Book of Goose. Wednesday’s Child is a collection of short stories spanning fifteen years of writing, and I think this is a well-written collection, all of which left me wanting more.

There are eleven stories, and each story focuses on a unique individual who is dealing with grief, motherhood, suicide, life, parenting, and marriage. I loved all the stories, but my favourite short stories are “Hello, Goodbye” and “Alone.” I absolutely enjoyed Li’s writing style. She has a fantastic way with words; the writing is so precise and has the power to evoke emotions. Her characters are also diverse and realistic, and she consistently handles her characters and topics beautifully. Even in such short stories, she gently highlights the complexity and suffering of a particular side of life.

Overall, I think this is a solid collection of short stories, and if you love literature and short stories, this book will not disappoint you.

“True grief, beginning with disbelief and often ending elsewhere, was never too late.”

“They were realistic people, and marriage was weather. They lived in it without any desire to control it or change it. They knew each other well enough to know the forecast.”

“Life had its own logic, which might look nonsensical to outsiders, but to those inside, it was logic nevertheless.”

Thank you Miss Putri and Times Reads for sending me the review copy 🫶🏻

Последният разказ е за 5 звезди. Първите няколко разказа за 4. Средата нещо не я усетих, но искам да я препрочета. Навярно книгата ще получи по-висока оценка от мен при втори прочит. Ли ми се струва много интересен и можещ писател.

Some pretty devastating short stories, all riffing off similar themes, ideas, characters (woman, mother, daughter, death, China, America, marriage). Some were especially good: "A Sheltered Woman" and "Alone." Collected over 14 years, it's interesting to see what seemed to really stick in Li's mind. Knowing a bit of her biography, and having read her memoir (?), I'd guess that she's writing from experience.

Ideally this would be a 3.5.

one of the best story collections i've EVER read, hands down.