Conversations with solemn children, bereaved parents, and forthcoming strangers become four glimpses into one woman’s life: four stories of remarkable introspection and resolve from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

A mourning mother, traveling alone, stays at a cottage in the English countryside. She finds herself unwillingly pulled into small talk with the house’s lonesome caretaker, but the exchanges become an anchor.

A woman shouldering a recent loss goes to her doctor’s office for a routine visit, where she meets an enigmatic new employee. The brief conversation they share unsettles the woman when, instead of the usual platitudes, she is met with surprising scrutiny.

The woman and her husband are parents without children. Back home after their overseas travels, the woman is resigned to their new, listless rhythm of life—until it is interrupted by a famous scholar, who reveals to her something stark about kindness and cruelty.

The woman and her husband are parents without children. Back home after their overseas travels, the woman is resigned to their new, listless rhythm of life—until it is interrupted by a famous scholar, who reveals to her something stark about kindness and cruelty.

These four portraits—first published in The New Yorker, now united—open up the beauty, mystery, and devastation existing in a life, and in the world. Lillian is a writer’s immense literary gifts distilled into a potent volume, as Yiyun Li renders the insoluble, inexplicable human condition with a precision and grace unlike any other.