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The Book of Goose
A gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End.
Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.
As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.
A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.
Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.
As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.
A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.
348 pages, Hardcover
First published September 20, 2022
About the author
Yiyun Li
55 books1,459 followersYiyun Li is the author of seven books, including Where Reasons End, which received the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; the essay collection Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life; and the novels The Vagrants and Must I Go. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Windham-Campbell Prize, among other honors. A contributing editor to A Public Space, she teaches at Princeton University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,547 reviews
May 7, 2023
My Brilliant Friend set in France. Only worse. Tepid writing, unbelievable characters and plot. Really, that’s all I care to say about this novel. Go read Ferrante instead.
Disclaimer: This is my highly subjective and literary untrained opinion. Not to be taken personally.
Disclaimer: This is my highly subjective and literary untrained opinion. Not to be taken personally.
June 12, 2022
Let us bow our heads and take a moment of silence to honor the colossal talent of Yiyun Li. Her latest novel is psychologically astute, insightful, and page-turning. That’s a hard feat to pay off.
There are two girls at the center of the story, set in rural France: Agnes and her closest friend Fabienne. Imagine a minefield where one girl walks everywhere as if there were not a single mine ready to detonate…and the other is too leery to take a step because she sees the entire world as that minefield. Our narrator Agnes, reflecting from a distance of time, thinks, “She had her will. I my willingness to be led by her will.”
Fabienne who has an abundance of talent but is neither polished nor attractive, devises a game. She will write a book – a disturbing and unsettling book that touches on a newborn being left in a pig pen, a madman having sex with a cow, a headless chicken and so forth. Agnes, with her perfect penmanship, will write it out and get to enjoy experiences that Fabienne could never dream of seizing for herself. In this way, the world will perhaps get a taste of their pain.
From a plot perspective, I will go no farther than that. Suffice to say that their complex and obsessional relationship intensifies as the two friends want – and are unable – to either destroy or save each other. Through the books they nurture, they cast the world aside for a while (for reasons that become clearer in the novel) and create games and even fantasies that feel real. But eventually, true reality always wins and the world has its way. Only one of them is clearsighted enough to understand that.
The Book of Goose, written by the grown-up Agnes, stems from her eventual knowledge that a story must be written out or how else do we get our revenge on a soul-crushing reality? I could easily read this book all over again with careful attention to its nuances. In the meantime, I can say that this is a book that shouldn’t be missed. My profound thanks to FSG Books for enabling me to be an early reader in exchange for an honest and awed review.
There are two girls at the center of the story, set in rural France: Agnes and her closest friend Fabienne. Imagine a minefield where one girl walks everywhere as if there were not a single mine ready to detonate…and the other is too leery to take a step because she sees the entire world as that minefield. Our narrator Agnes, reflecting from a distance of time, thinks, “She had her will. I my willingness to be led by her will.”
Fabienne who has an abundance of talent but is neither polished nor attractive, devises a game. She will write a book – a disturbing and unsettling book that touches on a newborn being left in a pig pen, a madman having sex with a cow, a headless chicken and so forth. Agnes, with her perfect penmanship, will write it out and get to enjoy experiences that Fabienne could never dream of seizing for herself. In this way, the world will perhaps get a taste of their pain.
From a plot perspective, I will go no farther than that. Suffice to say that their complex and obsessional relationship intensifies as the two friends want – and are unable – to either destroy or save each other. Through the books they nurture, they cast the world aside for a while (for reasons that become clearer in the novel) and create games and even fantasies that feel real. But eventually, true reality always wins and the world has its way. Only one of them is clearsighted enough to understand that.
The Book of Goose, written by the grown-up Agnes, stems from her eventual knowledge that a story must be written out or how else do we get our revenge on a soul-crushing reality? I could easily read this book all over again with careful attention to its nuances. In the meantime, I can say that this is a book that shouldn’t be missed. My profound thanks to FSG Books for enabling me to be an early reader in exchange for an honest and awed review.
July 27, 2022
Exclusive …. clingy …. demanding …. obsessive …. exhilarating …. unflinching …. monopolizing …. controlling …. …. devoted …. best girlfriends forever ….
“Fabienne and I were meant for each other. We were the perfect pair, one seeking all that the other could experience”.
During the volatile teenage years—troubleshooting puberty challenges can be icy, intense, and problematic.
In “The Book of Goose”…..
we meet Agnes and Fabienne. Their friendship together—fiercely attached—inseparable—is vitally important during their adolescence years. It’s also radioactive dangerous.
With vivid and piercing prose, Yiyun Li exposes the urgency that bond these two teenagers girls together.
“I gave Fabienne what she wanted: her Agnes. I did not give this Agnes to others, but what they asked of me I did my best to accommodate. I was quiet and hard-working at school, so I was never any teacher’s favorite; I was unobtrusive with the adults in the village; I obeyed my parents. My only flaw was that I was Fabienne’s friend, but my parents had accepted, with the hope that we might drift apart when I advanced in my schooling”.
I found this beautifully written novel arresting —psychologically astute and unsettling….
The girls played ‘a game’.
Agnes dictated very dark stories that came from Fabienne’s imagination.
Horrific tales:
….An American Negro was executed….
….A young woman suffocated her newborn and left it in a pig trough….
….A madman had sex with a cow…
….Another madman cut off the head of a chicken to show children how a headless chicken would dance….
etc.
Fabienne and Agnes shared these stories with an older man in their village: a recently widowed postmaster named M. Devaux (a poet and author himself).
M. Devaux helped the girls get published. Fabienne decided that Agnes should take full credit for the book….and she becomes famous.
M. Devaux tells Agnes….
“We want people to see a young girl from the countryside, who doesn’t know a lot about the world but who was guided by her intuition to write a book”.
“I did find M. Devaux’s soliloquy tiresome, and I asked Fabienne later what about him she found interesting. It’s not him I find interesting, but what he knows, she said”.
“Why? I asked”.
“We want to know how other people live”.
“Why do we want to know that?”
“You and I haven’t got enough experience, she said”.
“Enough experience for what?”
“For writing our books, silly”.
“I could not wait for Fabienne to lose interest in our book-writing game, so we could stop visiting M. Devaux.
I missed the days when we spoke endless nonsense or lay in the graveyard without moving or speaking”.
Things get more and more complex. Agnes goes off to a preppy school in England …Fabienne fabricates a cruel lie….
But ….
as the gowned-married Agnes tells us herself….
“Fabienne and I were in this world together, and we had only each other‘s hands to hold onto. She had her will. I, my willingness to be led by her will”.
We learn from the start that Fabienne was already dead.
Agnes narrates the story
…..looking back ….sharing her ‘coming-of-age-memories and her now adult understandings.
“You cannot cut an apple with an apple. You cannot cut an orange with an orange. All those years we had made ourselves believe that we were two apples hanging next to each other on the same branch, or that we were to oranges nestled in a crate, or, even, that we were born with joined selves, like one of those oddly shaped radishes or potatoes, two bodies and one. But that was only our make-believe. The truth was, Fabienne and I were two separate beings. I was a whetstone to Fabienne’s blade. There was no point asking which one of us was made of harder material”.
“Too often in myth and lore we see the goose representing silly attitudes or lazy dispositions. On the contrary, the symbolism of the goose is quite inspiring”.
I’ve read several books by Yiyun Li ….. and this one …..just might be my favorite.
“Fabienne and I were meant for each other. We were the perfect pair, one seeking all that the other could experience”.
During the volatile teenage years—troubleshooting puberty challenges can be icy, intense, and problematic.
In “The Book of Goose”…..
we meet Agnes and Fabienne. Their friendship together—fiercely attached—inseparable—is vitally important during their adolescence years. It’s also radioactive dangerous.
With vivid and piercing prose, Yiyun Li exposes the urgency that bond these two teenagers girls together.
“I gave Fabienne what she wanted: her Agnes. I did not give this Agnes to others, but what they asked of me I did my best to accommodate. I was quiet and hard-working at school, so I was never any teacher’s favorite; I was unobtrusive with the adults in the village; I obeyed my parents. My only flaw was that I was Fabienne’s friend, but my parents had accepted, with the hope that we might drift apart when I advanced in my schooling”.
I found this beautifully written novel arresting —psychologically astute and unsettling….
The girls played ‘a game’.
Agnes dictated very dark stories that came from Fabienne’s imagination.
Horrific tales:
….An American Negro was executed….
….A young woman suffocated her newborn and left it in a pig trough….
….A madman had sex with a cow…
….Another madman cut off the head of a chicken to show children how a headless chicken would dance….
etc.
Fabienne and Agnes shared these stories with an older man in their village: a recently widowed postmaster named M. Devaux (a poet and author himself).
M. Devaux helped the girls get published. Fabienne decided that Agnes should take full credit for the book….and she becomes famous.
M. Devaux tells Agnes….
“We want people to see a young girl from the countryside, who doesn’t know a lot about the world but who was guided by her intuition to write a book”.
“I did find M. Devaux’s soliloquy tiresome, and I asked Fabienne later what about him she found interesting. It’s not him I find interesting, but what he knows, she said”.
“Why? I asked”.
“We want to know how other people live”.
“Why do we want to know that?”
“You and I haven’t got enough experience, she said”.
“Enough experience for what?”
“For writing our books, silly”.
“I could not wait for Fabienne to lose interest in our book-writing game, so we could stop visiting M. Devaux.
I missed the days when we spoke endless nonsense or lay in the graveyard without moving or speaking”.
Things get more and more complex. Agnes goes off to a preppy school in England …Fabienne fabricates a cruel lie….
But ….
as the gowned-married Agnes tells us herself….
“Fabienne and I were in this world together, and we had only each other‘s hands to hold onto. She had her will. I, my willingness to be led by her will”.
We learn from the start that Fabienne was already dead.
Agnes narrates the story
…..looking back ….sharing her ‘coming-of-age-memories and her now adult understandings.
“You cannot cut an apple with an apple. You cannot cut an orange with an orange. All those years we had made ourselves believe that we were two apples hanging next to each other on the same branch, or that we were to oranges nestled in a crate, or, even, that we were born with joined selves, like one of those oddly shaped radishes or potatoes, two bodies and one. But that was only our make-believe. The truth was, Fabienne and I were two separate beings. I was a whetstone to Fabienne’s blade. There was no point asking which one of us was made of harder material”.
“Too often in myth and lore we see the goose representing silly attitudes or lazy dispositions. On the contrary, the symbolism of the goose is quite inspiring”.
I’ve read several books by Yiyun Li ….. and this one …..just might be my favorite.
July 17, 2022
The world had no place for two girls like us, though I was slow then, not knowing that Fabienne, slighted, thwarted, even fatally wounded, tried to make a fool of that world, on her and on my behalf.
I have to confess to mixed feelings about this book: the first third drew me in to the point that I almost missed my tube stop! The childhood and adolescence of the two girls in post-war rural France is done very well, as is the writing of the book for which Agnes is feted as a child prodigy.
But the switch to an English school and the separation of Agnes and Fabienne dialed down the intensity that had captured me and it never really came back. It's also hard when a key character is already dead before the book starts and so we never meet them directly, just see them via another person's memories and story.
For all the intention behind the narrative, I could never find this wholly convincing: it felt too much as if I was always seeing the ideological skeleton upon which the story is hung and so this never got back to working as a piece of engaging fiction for me. In fact, one of the most moving scenes is when Agnes is with her brother, Jean, returned, broken, from a German POW camp - and a minor piece within the overall picture.
There's nothing flashy about the style, it's quiet and a bit remorseless in a positive way. I'm glad I've read this for a variation on the theme of obsessive friendship and power, with an overlay of class and social expectations. A subtle exploration - but one not wholly satisfying for me.
Thanks to 4th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley - and that glorious cover!
September 16, 2022
The Book of Goose was the first book that I had the pleasure of reading by Yiyun Li. I was very impressed by her beautiful writing and her unique gift for storytelling. The Book of Goose was most definitely a character driven, coming of age book with a captivating and compelling storyline. I listened to the audiobook that was performed very well by Caroline Hewitt.
A young woman, now married and living in Philadelphia could be seen reading a letter from her mother. In the letter, the woman’s mother informed her daughter that Fabienne had died in childbirth. Receiving this news sparked a long ago memory in Agnes of two young girls that grew up together as inseparable friends in Saint Remy, France.
Two young French girls, Fabienne and Agnes, were inseparable friends during the post war years in their countryside village of Saint Remy, France. As in most childhood relationships, one child was generally the leader and one was generally the follower. In Fabienne’s and Agnes’s case, Fabienne was the leader and Agnes followed her lead. Agnes was obsessed with Fabienne and she was rarely out of Agnes’s thought for any length of time. Agnes went to school each day while Fabienne was made to help at home since her mother and older sister had died. Fabienne was Agnes’s one and only friend. Girls at school tried to befriend her but Agnes’s loyalty remained with Fabienne. As soon as Agnes got home from school, she ran to meet up with Fabienne. The two girls ran in the fields, climbed trees, invented games and often went to the village cemetery where they would lie on graves and ponder about ghosts and death.
One day, Fabienne decided that she and Agnes should write a book. The ideas for the book came from Fabienne and Agnes scribed them. Fabienne wove a story that was quite dark and even a big sinister. Fabienne enlisted the help of the local postman to aid them edit their book. It was Fabienne’s idea that Agnes’s name should appear on the book cover as the author. Even though the story was all Fabienne’s creation, she convinced Agnes that she would be better suited to handle all the aspects expected of an author. Agnes being Agnes, agreed to Fabienne’s plan. The creation of the book served as the catalyst that would forever change the relationship between Agnes and Fabienne.
Overall I enjoyed listening to the audiobook of The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. I found parts of the story disturbing. After I finished listening to the audiobook, I wondered if Agnes and Fabienne had had more parental involvement and guidance during their childhood if their fates might have been different. Both girls were allowed a great deal of freedom with little accountability for their activities or whereabouts. The Book of Goose explored friendships, loyalty, devotion and how opportunities could change the dynamics of a once treasured friendship. I look forward to reading more books by Yiyun Li. I highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for allowing me to listen to this audiobook through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Publication is set for September 20, 2022.
A young woman, now married and living in Philadelphia could be seen reading a letter from her mother. In the letter, the woman’s mother informed her daughter that Fabienne had died in childbirth. Receiving this news sparked a long ago memory in Agnes of two young girls that grew up together as inseparable friends in Saint Remy, France.
Two young French girls, Fabienne and Agnes, were inseparable friends during the post war years in their countryside village of Saint Remy, France. As in most childhood relationships, one child was generally the leader and one was generally the follower. In Fabienne’s and Agnes’s case, Fabienne was the leader and Agnes followed her lead. Agnes was obsessed with Fabienne and she was rarely out of Agnes’s thought for any length of time. Agnes went to school each day while Fabienne was made to help at home since her mother and older sister had died. Fabienne was Agnes’s one and only friend. Girls at school tried to befriend her but Agnes’s loyalty remained with Fabienne. As soon as Agnes got home from school, she ran to meet up with Fabienne. The two girls ran in the fields, climbed trees, invented games and often went to the village cemetery where they would lie on graves and ponder about ghosts and death.
One day, Fabienne decided that she and Agnes should write a book. The ideas for the book came from Fabienne and Agnes scribed them. Fabienne wove a story that was quite dark and even a big sinister. Fabienne enlisted the help of the local postman to aid them edit their book. It was Fabienne’s idea that Agnes’s name should appear on the book cover as the author. Even though the story was all Fabienne’s creation, she convinced Agnes that she would be better suited to handle all the aspects expected of an author. Agnes being Agnes, agreed to Fabienne’s plan. The creation of the book served as the catalyst that would forever change the relationship between Agnes and Fabienne.
Overall I enjoyed listening to the audiobook of The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. I found parts of the story disturbing. After I finished listening to the audiobook, I wondered if Agnes and Fabienne had had more parental involvement and guidance during their childhood if their fates might have been different. Both girls were allowed a great deal of freedom with little accountability for their activities or whereabouts. The Book of Goose explored friendships, loyalty, devotion and how opportunities could change the dynamics of a once treasured friendship. I look forward to reading more books by Yiyun Li. I highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for allowing me to listen to this audiobook through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Publication is set for September 20, 2022.
June 23, 2023
This is a puzzling tale of obsession and self-obliteration: Starting with narrator Agnès being a married woman in the US, she receives a letter about the death of her childhood friend Fabienne - and we join her when she looks back at their relationship. Growing up in a small town in post-WW II France, Agnès is transfixed by Fabienne's daring nature (while we as readers often perceive her as manipulative and mean). As a game, Fabienne invents creepy stories in order to convey the friends' lives and experiences, and she tells Agnès to write them down. With the help of the local postmaster, the game-book gets published, and Agnès, the face of the operation, leaves Fabienne behind to go on a book tour where she is celebrated as a child prodigy...
Social realism this is not, the hallucinatory prose lives from its unusual metaphors and settings that are reminiscent of (gothic) children's stories. An atmosphere of strangeness permeates the text, but the story starts to lack speed and composure when it shifts to the English finishing school that alleged prodigy Agnès attends - that part is just too long. What remains unsettling is the friendship between the girls, and how what Agnès projects on Fabienne gets a hold of her own personality: Agnès seems to exist only in contrast, connection, and/or comparison to the friend, which gives their relationship a sinister edge. We as readers never learn how it felt for Fabienne or whether she would agree to the descriptions Agnès offers.
Another haunting aspect is how Agnès and Fabienne experience the move from child- to adulthood, especially regarding the implications for females in the 50's. Here, we learn about the deep-seated (and well-justified) fears that seem to motivate Fabienne. The whole sinister Pygmalion / My Fair Lady madness of the finishing school and two deaths in childbirth are just some of the aspects the text highlights.
A novel about authorship and how we construct stories about ourselves, gripping and enigmatic.
Social realism this is not, the hallucinatory prose lives from its unusual metaphors and settings that are reminiscent of (gothic) children's stories. An atmosphere of strangeness permeates the text, but the story starts to lack speed and composure when it shifts to the English finishing school that alleged prodigy Agnès attends - that part is just too long. What remains unsettling is the friendship between the girls, and how what Agnès projects on Fabienne gets a hold of her own personality: Agnès seems to exist only in contrast, connection, and/or comparison to the friend, which gives their relationship a sinister edge. We as readers never learn how it felt for Fabienne or whether she would agree to the descriptions Agnès offers.
Another haunting aspect is how Agnès and Fabienne experience the move from child- to adulthood, especially regarding the implications for females in the 50's. Here, we learn about the deep-seated (and well-justified) fears that seem to motivate Fabienne. The whole sinister Pygmalion / My Fair Lady madness of the finishing school and two deaths in childbirth are just some of the aspects the text highlights.
A novel about authorship and how we construct stories about ourselves, gripping and enigmatic.
December 20, 2022
I tried very hard to connect to this novel but I think my initial instinct to ditch it might have been the wiser option.
With a promising set-up that will feel familiar to readers of “My Brilliant Friend” it sort of runs out of steam halfway. It’s a huge problem when you don’t buy into / understand the central friendship nor why they started writing, nor how thing’s unraveled in the end.
Hmmm, in short, I didn’t understand the entire premise of the book !
I have to conclude sometimes “end of year best lists” are wrong ;)
With a promising set-up that will feel familiar to readers of “My Brilliant Friend” it sort of runs out of steam halfway. It’s a huge problem when you don’t buy into / understand the central friendship nor why they started writing, nor how thing’s unraveled in the end.
Hmmm, in short, I didn’t understand the entire premise of the book !
I have to conclude sometimes “end of year best lists” are wrong ;)
Want to read
July 31, 2024i can't wait to read about the titular Goose
May 5, 2023
I have so many issues with that book.
The first one -- and I don't know if the problem was Yiyun Li's style or the structure she has chosen (telling the story in retropect) -- is that the book is cold, detached and emotionless. The book gains nothing from being told in retrospect, but it looses a lot. Tension, emotion, surprise. We already know that the two girls friendship ended badly, we don't know how -- but we honestly barely cared. (BTW, I still don't know why their friendship died, it was very muddled in the end.)
The second problem is the book doesn't deliver on its premise. We enter the story with two 13-years-old girls, one very wild, the other very VERY obsessed with her friend, who create a litterary hoax, one writing a stellar book, the other playing the part of the author for the publisher, the press, everyone. That's a premise for a book about violent friendship, betrayals, the dangerous game of creation and lies, etc. What we have instead is story that more often than not is boring, meek, and end up on a flop. All along, I was expecting the author to finally develop that idea that Agnès, the faker, a very passive girl next to the dominant genius Fabienne, ended up being the more manipulative and using the hoax to "propulse" herself in life. In the first part, this is what happen, but in spite of herself. And then, the story just desintegrates into something really uninteresting. My reaction to the ending was : all that for that ? Bleh.
The third thing that didn't click for me was her knowledge of the France of the 50s. She did her research allright, but it still rings very false on a few points. Insulting in the way she describes peasant life (yeah, they did brush their teeth, and they knew what was a bath even if they didn't have bathtub), highly unbelievable when she sends her "child prodigy" to an english finishing school (she would have gone to a french school, because it was the only sensible thing to do. Also, I don't think the author quite grapples the contempt there is between France and England), and far too modern in her analysis of what the french litterary world was back then. A book written by a 13-years-old girl about a woman killing her newborn and feeding them to pigs, or a man having sex with a cow, wouldn't have been hailed as the morbid imagining of a child prodigy but as a huge scandal. It would have met censorship from the government in the week following its publication and would have been removed from the shelves. After she completely misinterpreted that, I felt my suspension of disbelief become quite lax.
The first one -- and I don't know if the problem was Yiyun Li's style or the structure she has chosen (telling the story in retropect) -- is that the book is cold, detached and emotionless. The book gains nothing from being told in retrospect, but it looses a lot. Tension, emotion, surprise. We already know that the two girls friendship ended badly, we don't know how -- but we honestly barely cared. (BTW, I still don't know why their friendship died, it was very muddled in the end.)
The second problem is the book doesn't deliver on its premise. We enter the story with two 13-years-old girls, one very wild, the other very VERY obsessed with her friend, who create a litterary hoax, one writing a stellar book, the other playing the part of the author for the publisher, the press, everyone. That's a premise for a book about violent friendship, betrayals, the dangerous game of creation and lies, etc. What we have instead is story that more often than not is boring, meek, and end up on a flop. All along, I was expecting the author to finally develop that idea that Agnès, the faker, a very passive girl next to the dominant genius Fabienne, ended up being the more manipulative and using the hoax to "propulse" herself in life. In the first part, this is what happen, but in spite of herself. And then, the story just desintegrates into something really uninteresting. My reaction to the ending was : all that for that ? Bleh.
The third thing that didn't click for me was her knowledge of the France of the 50s. She did her research allright, but it still rings very false on a few points. Insulting in the way she describes peasant life (yeah, they did brush their teeth, and they knew what was a bath even if they didn't have bathtub), highly unbelievable when she sends her "child prodigy" to an english finishing school (she would have gone to a french school, because it was the only sensible thing to do. Also, I don't think the author quite grapples the contempt there is between France and England), and far too modern in her analysis of what the french litterary world was back then. A book written by a 13-years-old girl about a woman killing her newborn and feeding them to pigs, or a man having sex with a cow, wouldn't have been hailed as the morbid imagining of a child prodigy but as a huge scandal. It would have met censorship from the government in the week following its publication and would have been removed from the shelves. After she completely misinterpreted that, I felt my suspension of disbelief become quite lax.
February 4, 2023
4.5
At the start of this novel, you’d be forgiven for thinking the friendship of Agnès and Fabienne will turn out to be like the friendship in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend: the girls live in a poor area (here, a rural community in France) and in a similar time period; only one of the each pair is at school; and the writing of a book is instrumental to both stories. The two novels also share first-person narrators who are looking back after hearing of her friend's death; some similar themes—talent and temperament being frustrated, unfulfilled and buried, for one —; and plenty of the same emotions, though Li’s prose is much more restrained than Ferrante's.
All of this, and yet the two stories are quite different. Before the end of Li’s novel, I came to think my comparison to the Ferrante was merely superficial. (I thought instead of Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures, though there too are big differences.)
I’ve written too many words to say that Yiyun Li’s story is its own thing. Her every word seems to have been chosen deliberately, so much so, that near the very end of the novel, a certain adjective brought me back to the dedication page.
At the start of this novel, you’d be forgiven for thinking the friendship of Agnès and Fabienne will turn out to be like the friendship in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend: the girls live in a poor area (here, a rural community in France) and in a similar time period; only one of the each pair is at school; and the writing of a book is instrumental to both stories. The two novels also share first-person narrators who are looking back after hearing of her friend's death; some similar themes—talent and temperament being frustrated, unfulfilled and buried, for one —; and plenty of the same emotions, though Li’s prose is much more restrained than Ferrante's.
All of this, and yet the two stories are quite different. Before the end of Li’s novel, I came to think my comparison to the Ferrante was merely superficial. (I thought instead of Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures, though there too are big differences.)
I’ve written too many words to say that Yiyun Li’s story is its own thing. Her every word seems to have been chosen deliberately, so much so, that near the very end of the novel, a certain adjective brought me back to the dedication page.
May 11, 2024
I think I missed something here. Was it a book about an unhealthy, toxic, and overly clingy relationship between two very strange girls, who loved nothing more then to ruin people's life's, scare other children, and be generally weird and morbid? If it wasn't about that, then I guess I missed the point.
Our young "heroine", Agnès, is looking back at a childhood relationship she had with an old friend, Fabienne, (whom I'm sure grew up to be a raging psycopath) in the remote French village of St. Remy. Agnès is remenecing about the time her and Fabienne played "author." With the "help" of a local widower, the two young girls wrote multiple, highly successful novels. But like all games, it eventually becomes boring. Our young friends drift apart as children will do, and Agnes ends up raising geese with funny names. Now you don't need to waste your time reading it.
The premise is stupid; the characters are stupid; the entire thing is.....you guessed it, stupid!
Our young "heroine", Agnès, is looking back at a childhood relationship she had with an old friend, Fabienne, (whom I'm sure grew up to be a raging psycopath) in the remote French village of St. Remy. Agnès is remenecing about the time her and Fabienne played "author." With the "help" of a local widower, the two young girls wrote multiple, highly successful novels. But like all games, it eventually becomes boring. Our young friends drift apart as children will do, and Agnes ends up raising geese with funny names. Now you don't need to waste your time reading it.
The premise is stupid; the characters are stupid; the entire thing is.....you guessed it, stupid!
October 16, 2024
Mild spoilers ahead.
I think I've sat with this long enough to decide to write a full scope of my thoughts. I haven't been this frustrated by a book since the disaster that was My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I know people often argue that unlikeable characters shouldn't make a reader hate a book but sometimes they just make the story unbearable. Ordinarily, unlikeable characters have a certain charm or charisma, they can be so offputting that you want to see them face their comeuppance, or actually root for them to get their shit together. A book that accomplishes this is Luster by Raven Leilani.
In this book, we follow two 14 year old girls, Fabienne and Agnes who are existing in post-World War 2 France in a forgettable village known as Saint Remy. Fabienne is a shepherd girl who helps manage their meager farm's livestock. She's also cruel, vindictive, mendacious, short-sighted, and according to her bleached shadow, creative. Agnes is a cardboard cutout of a character, a thin 2D caricature of a girl obsessed with her best friend. Fabienne is supposed to be a queenbee cult leader figure but really she was just a brat who was arrogant enough to deny her ignorance.
Out of nowhere, Fabienne decides they're going to write a book. It's a collection of short stories about babies. They convince a widower who was a failed poet and philosopher to help them publish their book. Fabienne comes up with the stories and Agnes writes them down because she's the only literate one. She also underestimates her powers of bad imagination because at one point she keeps a diary of stories where she compares a redhead's hair to a bird's nest. Shall I compare thee to a clown's crown, Agnes probably. The widower, Devaux, manages to get their book to a publisher who creates a big deal about it. Fabienne instructs that the book only have Agnes' name on it. I guess in 1952 France, they'd never heard of collaborative authors. Agnes gets a press tour and eventually, an opportunity to go to finishing school. Their book was also inexplicably a bestseller. I haven't read a lot of French fiction from that time period but the French don't strike me as a maudlin enough audience to want to read a collection of short stories by underbaked teenagers about unfortunate babies. The book tries hard to convince the reader how Fabienne is a kind of savant but I was never convinced. Their second book, that was abandoned, was about some postman that was in love with a girl and she conspires with his sister to be his first heartbreak. That did sound like something a bit more quintessentially French but again, this book refuses to even offer snippets of this fiction. We're just told that Fabienne came up with it because... reasons. She wanted Agnes to be ambitious but it has to be Fabienne-approved ambitions, which all go nowhere. Maybe it was trying to show the futility of attempting to find meaning in girlhood but I thought The Virgin Suicides did it better. This book is just stupid.
Fabienne also decides to frame Devaux of inappropriate actions because they wanted their scheme to succeed. But this is pointless because Devaux never wanted their money. Fabienne also abandons their "game" when Agnes schemes her way out of finishing school (which she could have just refused to attend when she was invited). The whole book was a study in pointlessness. It had a few lines that resonated with me as a writer but ultimately it amounts to nothing. My buddy read partner Christina enjoyed this fairly but I was completely frustrated with it. The book has nothing of import or meaning to say and as such it can't even attempt to be entertaining. Fabienne eventually marries a clown and dies in childbirth, which is completely unimaginative as her own mother also died in childbirth. Agnes ends up in the US, married to a man whom she met while working as a seamstress, having faced no consequences for ruining the lives of Devaux and all the other adults whose resources she wasted. Their fallout happens in the span of a few paragraphs and the author couldn't be bothered to explore what it meant to Agnes to lose her misplaced reason to live.
This book was frustrating, boring, nebulous, meandering, silly, pointless, incongruous and unpleasant. It felt as compelling as trying to befriend a real life goose.
1.5 stars.
Find more of my latest work here
I think I've sat with this long enough to decide to write a full scope of my thoughts. I haven't been this frustrated by a book since the disaster that was My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I know people often argue that unlikeable characters shouldn't make a reader hate a book but sometimes they just make the story unbearable. Ordinarily, unlikeable characters have a certain charm or charisma, they can be so offputting that you want to see them face their comeuppance, or actually root for them to get their shit together. A book that accomplishes this is Luster by Raven Leilani.
In this book, we follow two 14 year old girls, Fabienne and Agnes who are existing in post-World War 2 France in a forgettable village known as Saint Remy. Fabienne is a shepherd girl who helps manage their meager farm's livestock. She's also cruel, vindictive, mendacious, short-sighted, and according to her bleached shadow, creative. Agnes is a cardboard cutout of a character, a thin 2D caricature of a girl obsessed with her best friend. Fabienne is supposed to be a queenbee cult leader figure but really she was just a brat who was arrogant enough to deny her ignorance.
Out of nowhere, Fabienne decides they're going to write a book. It's a collection of short stories about babies. They convince a widower who was a failed poet and philosopher to help them publish their book. Fabienne comes up with the stories and Agnes writes them down because she's the only literate one. She also underestimates her powers of bad imagination because at one point she keeps a diary of stories where she compares a redhead's hair to a bird's nest. Shall I compare thee to a clown's crown, Agnes probably. The widower, Devaux, manages to get their book to a publisher who creates a big deal about it. Fabienne instructs that the book only have Agnes' name on it. I guess in 1952 France, they'd never heard of collaborative authors. Agnes gets a press tour and eventually, an opportunity to go to finishing school. Their book was also inexplicably a bestseller. I haven't read a lot of French fiction from that time period but the French don't strike me as a maudlin enough audience to want to read a collection of short stories by underbaked teenagers about unfortunate babies. The book tries hard to convince the reader how Fabienne is a kind of savant but I was never convinced. Their second book, that was abandoned, was about some postman that was in love with a girl and she conspires with his sister to be his first heartbreak. That did sound like something a bit more quintessentially French but again, this book refuses to even offer snippets of this fiction. We're just told that Fabienne came up with it because... reasons. She wanted Agnes to be ambitious but it has to be Fabienne-approved ambitions, which all go nowhere. Maybe it was trying to show the futility of attempting to find meaning in girlhood but I thought The Virgin Suicides did it better. This book is just stupid.
Fabienne also decides to frame Devaux of inappropriate actions because they wanted their scheme to succeed. But this is pointless because Devaux never wanted their money. Fabienne also abandons their "game" when Agnes schemes her way out of finishing school (which she could have just refused to attend when she was invited). The whole book was a study in pointlessness. It had a few lines that resonated with me as a writer but ultimately it amounts to nothing. My buddy read partner Christina enjoyed this fairly but I was completely frustrated with it. The book has nothing of import or meaning to say and as such it can't even attempt to be entertaining. Fabienne eventually marries a clown and dies in childbirth, which is completely unimaginative as her own mother also died in childbirth. Agnes ends up in the US, married to a man whom she met while working as a seamstress, having faced no consequences for ruining the lives of Devaux and all the other adults whose resources she wasted. Their fallout happens in the span of a few paragraphs and the author couldn't be bothered to explore what it meant to Agnes to lose her misplaced reason to live.
This book was frustrating, boring, nebulous, meandering, silly, pointless, incongruous and unpleasant. It felt as compelling as trying to befriend a real life goose.
1.5 stars.
Find more of my latest work here
October 12, 2022
THE BOOK OF GOOSE is my first book from Yiyun Li, but I intend after this reading to read more from her. Fabienne and Agnes are best friends in a poor French country town, where they make up a great deal: new names, new lives for themselves--new people. Fabienne is bold and careless, Agnes is creative and self-aware, and both are clever. One day, Fabienne invents a plan: they will write a book, and make Agnes famous, and will have everything they want.
This book was so strange and beautiful, I hardly know how to describe it. It's a surprising tale about girlhood and friendship. It's also a story about power and exploitation, and about resisting such forces. I deeply loved the characters Agnes and Fabienne and all the weird offshoots of them both.
I listened to an Audiobook, and many times I found myself wishing I was reading it. I both wanted to study the prose, which was beautiful, and I wanted the freedom to move backward and forward more easily in the narrative. I kept thinking that the timeline bore on my interpretation of the book's meaning. This is a clever, evocative book, so I'm going to buy a print copy and reread it!
Thank you NetGalley, Yiyun Li, and MacMillan Audio for an audio ARC of this wonderful book.
Rating 5 stars
Finished October 2022
Recommended for fans of literary fiction, coming of age tales, the Brontes
*Follow my Instagram book blog for all my reviews, challenges, and book lists! http://www.instagram.com/donasbooks *
This book was so strange and beautiful, I hardly know how to describe it. It's a surprising tale about girlhood and friendship. It's also a story about power and exploitation, and about resisting such forces. I deeply loved the characters Agnes and Fabienne and all the weird offshoots of them both.
I listened to an Audiobook, and many times I found myself wishing I was reading it. I both wanted to study the prose, which was beautiful, and I wanted the freedom to move backward and forward more easily in the narrative. I kept thinking that the timeline bore on my interpretation of the book's meaning. This is a clever, evocative book, so I'm going to buy a print copy and reread it!
Thank you NetGalley, Yiyun Li, and MacMillan Audio for an audio ARC of this wonderful book.
Rating 5 stars
Finished October 2022
Recommended for fans of literary fiction, coming of age tales, the Brontes
*Follow my Instagram book blog for all my reviews, challenges, and book lists! http://www.instagram.com/donasbooks *
June 4, 2024
O carte bine scrisa, este povestea unei prietenii intre doua fete de la tara.
O carte despre destin, șansă și modul în care construim povești despre noi, captivante și enigmatice.
M-am conectat un pic mai greu cu personajele de unde si cele 3 stele.
O carte despre destin, șansă și modul în care construim povești despre noi, captivante și enigmatice.
M-am conectat un pic mai greu cu personajele de unde si cele 3 stele.
Read
January 21, 20233.5
This novel is about two adolescent girls, Agnes and Fabienne, who form an intense friendship, in a rural town in post-war France. The story is narrated by Agnes, who reminisces about their relationship and the past. Fabienne is the dominant, moody friend, Agnes is the follower and observer. One day, Fabienne decides to write a book about their lives. They make a game of it. She dictates her stories to Agnes, who's got better penmanship. They show their book to the local postmaster, who helps them get published, with only Agnes as the writer. Agnes becomes somewhat famous and ends up in a finishing boarding school in England.
This is a story of friendship, destiny or chance. It's an easy read, but it lost some steam towards the end, and I can't say it had the emotional punch I expected. It was however a good introduction to Yiyun Li's writing.
This novel is about two adolescent girls, Agnes and Fabienne, who form an intense friendship, in a rural town in post-war France. The story is narrated by Agnes, who reminisces about their relationship and the past. Fabienne is the dominant, moody friend, Agnes is the follower and observer. One day, Fabienne decides to write a book about their lives. They make a game of it. She dictates her stories to Agnes, who's got better penmanship. They show their book to the local postmaster, who helps them get published, with only Agnes as the writer. Agnes becomes somewhat famous and ends up in a finishing boarding school in England.
This is a story of friendship, destiny or chance. It's an easy read, but it lost some steam towards the end, and I can't say it had the emotional punch I expected. It was however a good introduction to Yiyun Li's writing.
March 20, 2024
enjoyable enough to read in one day, but in terms of plot it felt too similar to elena ferrante's my brilliant friend (one of my all time favourite novels). i’m still interested in reading more from yiyun li.
January 17, 2024
Deep Dive Discussion (January 2024)
The Book of Goose won the 2023 PEN/Faulkner fiction award. This year PEN/Faulkner offered Deep Dive discussions on each of the novels that made the 2023 PEN/Faulkner long list; I don’t know if they have offered this opportunity in the past. I signed up for The Book of Goose Deep Dive. It was an hour long and there were 13 participants, which included Patricia Park, a professor of Creative Writing at American University and published author, who led the discussion. Everyone participated via a Zoom session.
I initially read The Book of Goose in May of 2023, and then read it a second time in late December 2023 as preparation for this Deep Dive. The Deep Dive was very much like a book club discussion. All the participants seemed to be well-read. As you would expect from a session of this length, a lot of ground was covered but a lot was left uncovered.
Some of the topics discussed were not ones I had considered in any depth. For instance, we talked about the framing of the story. The novel begins at its most recent point in time, goes back to capture an earlier point in time which makes up most of the novel’s content, and then moves back to the current point in time. I had recognized this structure while reading the book, found it worked well for me, but had not asked myself why this method was used or questioned how effective it was. There was also discussion about how the novel would have been changed if this structure had not been used, which was a very different way to look at it.
We talked about the narrative voice in the novel--how detached it seemed. Comments were made that the story felt like a fable or a poem. We considered angles that looked at the story very differently than I did; those were interesting to consider. Someone observed that Agnes never showed much remorse for how some individuals had been treated, such as Devaux and Meeker, or that she had escaped Saint Rémy whereas Fabienne had not.
We did not spend much time on the characters’ motivations, the relationship between Agnes and Fabienne or why their relationship dissolved. That was disappointing to me, but in discussing a novel of this complexity for an hour, you can’t fit in everything. Overall, a good experience that I recommend if available in the future.
2nd read (December 2023)
This is my second read of this novel; something I rarely do. When I originally read it, I felt there was something I did not grasp. Not concerning the plot, but as to the motivations of the characters. What motivated Fabienne? Why was Agnes so attracted to Fabienne despite Fabienne’s frequent insults and disparaging comments? What was the true nature of the relationship between Agnes and Fabienne? While in the second read I did not find answers to all of my questions, I did recognize that I had been looking at Fabienne’s motivations from the perspective of what would motivate me and what was considered reasonable in the world in which I lived and worked. This was a mistake.
I also realized that Agnes and Fabienne are very complex characters who look more like living, breathing human beings than the characters I typically meet in novels. While I know there is love between the two, I am still working to understand it. That’s a good thing. I am raising my rating of this novel from three to four stars. That change is certainly justified. This novel held my interest throughout my second read, and I will not soon put it behind me.
1st Read (May 2023)
Two girls, Fabienne and Agnes, are best friends, although it is difficult to determine why. They are growing up together in the 1950’s in St. Remy, a French village. The more intelligent and creative of the two, Fabienne, regularly insults Agnes. Agnes recognizes that she maintains the friendship by always being agreeable with Fabienne. In her actions, Fabienne will periodically do something that is both selfless and very supportive of Agnes, but it is Agnes who is always professing her affection and need for Fabienne. Fabienne acts and speaks in a very superior manner, intellectually, to Agnes.
My biggest struggle with this novel is that I never understood Fabienne’s motivations, and therefore never believed in the friendship. However, The Book of Goose is really about Agnes. It is about her ability to give her life shape and form, separate from this person who means so much to her.
This novel, The Book of Goose, won the 2023 Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction. Yiyun Li is a well-established and respected novelist. I found this novel very readable, but not overly satisfying. I discovered, though, that Yiyun Li made me think, so I may give her another try in the future.
The Book of Goose won the 2023 PEN/Faulkner fiction award. This year PEN/Faulkner offered Deep Dive discussions on each of the novels that made the 2023 PEN/Faulkner long list; I don’t know if they have offered this opportunity in the past. I signed up for The Book of Goose Deep Dive. It was an hour long and there were 13 participants, which included Patricia Park, a professor of Creative Writing at American University and published author, who led the discussion. Everyone participated via a Zoom session.
I initially read The Book of Goose in May of 2023, and then read it a second time in late December 2023 as preparation for this Deep Dive. The Deep Dive was very much like a book club discussion. All the participants seemed to be well-read. As you would expect from a session of this length, a lot of ground was covered but a lot was left uncovered.
Some of the topics discussed were not ones I had considered in any depth. For instance, we talked about the framing of the story. The novel begins at its most recent point in time, goes back to capture an earlier point in time which makes up most of the novel’s content, and then moves back to the current point in time. I had recognized this structure while reading the book, found it worked well for me, but had not asked myself why this method was used or questioned how effective it was. There was also discussion about how the novel would have been changed if this structure had not been used, which was a very different way to look at it.
We talked about the narrative voice in the novel--how detached it seemed. Comments were made that the story felt like a fable or a poem. We considered angles that looked at the story very differently than I did; those were interesting to consider. Someone observed that Agnes never showed much remorse for how some individuals had been treated, such as Devaux and Meeker, or that she had escaped Saint Rémy whereas Fabienne had not.
We did not spend much time on the characters’ motivations, the relationship between Agnes and Fabienne or why their relationship dissolved. That was disappointing to me, but in discussing a novel of this complexity for an hour, you can’t fit in everything. Overall, a good experience that I recommend if available in the future.
2nd read (December 2023)
This is my second read of this novel; something I rarely do. When I originally read it, I felt there was something I did not grasp. Not concerning the plot, but as to the motivations of the characters. What motivated Fabienne? Why was Agnes so attracted to Fabienne despite Fabienne’s frequent insults and disparaging comments? What was the true nature of the relationship between Agnes and Fabienne? While in the second read I did not find answers to all of my questions, I did recognize that I had been looking at Fabienne’s motivations from the perspective of what would motivate me and what was considered reasonable in the world in which I lived and worked. This was a mistake.
I also realized that Agnes and Fabienne are very complex characters who look more like living, breathing human beings than the characters I typically meet in novels. While I know there is love between the two, I am still working to understand it. That’s a good thing. I am raising my rating of this novel from three to four stars. That change is certainly justified. This novel held my interest throughout my second read, and I will not soon put it behind me.
1st Read (May 2023)
Two girls, Fabienne and Agnes, are best friends, although it is difficult to determine why. They are growing up together in the 1950’s in St. Remy, a French village. The more intelligent and creative of the two, Fabienne, regularly insults Agnes. Agnes recognizes that she maintains the friendship by always being agreeable with Fabienne. In her actions, Fabienne will periodically do something that is both selfless and very supportive of Agnes, but it is Agnes who is always professing her affection and need for Fabienne. Fabienne acts and speaks in a very superior manner, intellectually, to Agnes.
My biggest struggle with this novel is that I never understood Fabienne’s motivations, and therefore never believed in the friendship. However, The Book of Goose is really about Agnes. It is about her ability to give her life shape and form, separate from this person who means so much to her.
This novel, The Book of Goose, won the 2023 Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction. Yiyun Li is a well-established and respected novelist. I found this novel very readable, but not overly satisfying. I discovered, though, that Yiyun Li made me think, so I may give her another try in the future.
October 16, 2022
Loved this beautiful book. Subtle elements of classic literature, fairytale, gothic, and Bildungsroman. A gorgeous and tragic exploration of the loss of childhood innocence. Pitch-perfect prose; I need to read more Yiyun Li.
January 27, 2023
Rounded up to 4.5
A remarkably strange, fabulous tale of two young girls, Agnes and Fabienne, growing up together in a French village in the 1950s and learning how to play a game of fable and myth-making. Through this shared game of storytelling these passionate, obsessive friends seek to remake the world and those around them. There's a quality of restraint and deep currents of literary thought in this book that offer a quite different experience of mythmaking power, particularly in the context of childhood and the challenge of holding on to that as we mature and too often grow apart. There's also a sense of the pain and sacrifice that seeing the world differently requires.
I want to think a little more on this one before I continue my review. This is one of those books I like to give some time and space to savour that reading afterglow.
A remarkably strange, fabulous tale of two young girls, Agnes and Fabienne, growing up together in a French village in the 1950s and learning how to play a game of fable and myth-making. Through this shared game of storytelling these passionate, obsessive friends seek to remake the world and those around them. There's a quality of restraint and deep currents of literary thought in this book that offer a quite different experience of mythmaking power, particularly in the context of childhood and the challenge of holding on to that as we mature and too often grow apart. There's also a sense of the pain and sacrifice that seeing the world differently requires.
I want to think a little more on this one before I continue my review. This is one of those books I like to give some time and space to savour that reading afterglow.
November 15, 2022
Did I like this book? No. Did I learn anything from it? Also no. Was I annoyed by the characters every second of reading it? Absolutely. I love stories that dig into friendships but this did nothing but aggravate me. I also just don’t buy it - these girls are so bored and obsessed with each other that they spend entire days finding ways to be mean to people and animals. They destroy whole lives for the hell of it, randomly decide to write a book, lie about who wrote it, and there’s an entire finishing school storyline with an evil headmistress that feels like a rehash of every bad book I read in my childhood. And don’t get me started on the title. Given the repetition, this should have been called My Orange Is A Knife. Beautiful cover. Shouldn’t have trusted it.
November 24, 2022
Set in 1950s rural France, two adolescent girlfriends, Fabienne and Agnès, write a book. Fabienne is the creative spirit but recognizes that Agnès would supply a more acceptable public persona, so the book is published under Agnès’s name. The story is told by twenty-eight-year-old Agnès looking back at her friendship with Fabienne from age 12 to 14 upon learning of her friend’s death. In telling the story, she is trying to come to terms with their power-imbalance, how she let herself be influenced, and what happened when she was seen as a literary child prodigy.
This is a subtle tale. It is character driven and the limited plot is moved forward by curiosity about the impact of the deception. It is beautifully written and easy to tell that the author enjoys wordplay. She captured the intimacy of youthful friendship, while drawing the reader into their world. It is a wonderful reading experience for those who enjoy quiet stories about human connections.
This is a subtle tale. It is character driven and the limited plot is moved forward by curiosity about the impact of the deception. It is beautifully written and easy to tell that the author enjoys wordplay. She captured the intimacy of youthful friendship, while drawing the reader into their world. It is a wonderful reading experience for those who enjoy quiet stories about human connections.
March 22, 2024
4.5/5
Yiyun Li, 1950’lerin hemen başında Fransa taşrasında yaşayan iki arkadaşın, Fabienne ve Agnès’in hikayesini anlatıyor bu romanda. Dağlarda çobanlık yapan Fabienne, yaşadığı ortamla son derece uyumsuzken; Agnès tüm uysallığıyla okuluna devam eden birisi. Zıt olmalarına rağmen kendilerine has bir dünyaları olan bu iki arkadaş bir gün bir karar alıyorlar ve birlikte kitap yazarak Agnès’in adıyla yayınlatıyorlar. Ne oluyorsa da ondan sonra oluyor. (Daha fazla detaya girmek istemediğim için hikayeyi anlatmayı burada kesiyorum.)
Kazkafanın Kitabı aynı anda birden fazla meseleyi ele alan kuvvetli bir roman. İki kızın arkadaşlığı üzerinden hayata, ölüme, çocukluğa, kurgu-gerçek zıtlığına, edebiyata, 1950’lerdeki 2. Dünya Savaşı yorgunu zamanın ruhuna ve kadının toplumdaki yerine dair çok şey söylüyor yazar. Üstelik hikayenin ilk katmanını hayli basit tutarak yapıyor bunu. Bu belki bazı okuyucuları tatmin edici olmayabilir ama karakterleri sevdiyseniz, kitabı tamamladığınızda birçok şey daha iyi netleşiyor. Ben romanın bu yapısını çok sevdim ama Fabienne karakteri başlı başına o kadar güçlü ki başka hiçbir şey olmasa da sırf onun için bile romanı severdim. Aynı şekilde romanın sonunu da hikayeye çok yakıştırdım. Böyle olunca da ortaya benim için oldukça tatmin edici, iyi bir metin çıkmış oldu.
Uzun lafın kısası, güzel bir roman okumak isteyen, yazmaya, kurgu/gerçek üzerine düşünmeye meraklı herkese gönül rahatlığıyla tavsiye edebileceğim bir roman Kazkafanın Kitabı.
Yiyun Li, 1950’lerin hemen başında Fransa taşrasında yaşayan iki arkadaşın, Fabienne ve Agnès’in hikayesini anlatıyor bu romanda. Dağlarda çobanlık yapan Fabienne, yaşadığı ortamla son derece uyumsuzken; Agnès tüm uysallığıyla okuluna devam eden birisi. Zıt olmalarına rağmen kendilerine has bir dünyaları olan bu iki arkadaş bir gün bir karar alıyorlar ve birlikte kitap yazarak Agnès’in adıyla yayınlatıyorlar. Ne oluyorsa da ondan sonra oluyor. (Daha fazla detaya girmek istemediğim için hikayeyi anlatmayı burada kesiyorum.)
Kazkafanın Kitabı aynı anda birden fazla meseleyi ele alan kuvvetli bir roman. İki kızın arkadaşlığı üzerinden hayata, ölüme, çocukluğa, kurgu-gerçek zıtlığına, edebiyata, 1950’lerdeki 2. Dünya Savaşı yorgunu zamanın ruhuna ve kadının toplumdaki yerine dair çok şey söylüyor yazar. Üstelik hikayenin ilk katmanını hayli basit tutarak yapıyor bunu. Bu belki bazı okuyucuları tatmin edici olmayabilir ama karakterleri sevdiyseniz, kitabı tamamladığınızda birçok şey daha iyi netleşiyor. Ben romanın bu yapısını çok sevdim ama Fabienne karakteri başlı başına o kadar güçlü ki başka hiçbir şey olmasa da sırf onun için bile romanı severdim. Aynı şekilde romanın sonunu da hikayeye çok yakıştırdım. Böyle olunca da ortaya benim için oldukça tatmin edici, iyi bir metin çıkmış oldu.
Uzun lafın kısası, güzel bir roman okumak isteyen, yazmaya, kurgu/gerçek üzerine düşünmeye meraklı herkese gönül rahatlığıyla tavsiye edebileceğim bir roman Kazkafanın Kitabı.
July 3, 2022
The Book of Goose is an unusual and compelling story about two friends, Agnès and Fabienne, in a rural French burg. Their personalities couldn’t be more opposite, and yet they mirror each other in ways that keep them entwined. Agnès narrates the tale; Fabienne has recently died in childbirth, which causes Agnès to reminisce back to when they were young girls. She is in her late twenties now, a bit melancholy, missing her friend more than many miss their departed spouses. It reads almost as a myth, a fairytale—a meta- fairytale, as you will discover as the pages turn. It’s the story of friendship, loyalty, love, fame, art, privilege, depravity, and obsession.
They met when they were just goslings, so to speak. Geese are monogamous, by the way (which helped me in figuring out some of the symbolism of the book). Fabienne is aloof, while Agnès is more emotionally dependent on her friend. In fact, Agnès feels that she doesn’t need anyone but Fabienne in her life, to give it meaning, and has no desire to leave the countryside.
The two friends (largely Fabienne) hatch a scheme with an adult teacher when they are just thirteen, and write a lurid, dark tale with his assistance. The book becomes a blockbuster best-seller. Since Fabienne decided that Agnès would claim authorship, Agnès is the one who travels the circuit, and subsequently attends a private boarding school in England (reluctantly), because Fabienne talks her into it. Agnès meets upper class, wealthy girls, an eccentric mentor, and learns a bit about the art and guile of sophistication. Class divides become more apparent to her, although her continued focus is Fabienne, and the desire to return home to her.
“Morning and evening make a day. Days and nights make a week, a month, a life. Drop me into any moment, point me in any direction, and I could retrace my life. Details beget details. With all those details one might hope for the full picture. A full picture of what, though? The more we remember, the less we understand.”
Goose kept me fastened to every page, in a way not unlike the girls’ lives together. There is a definite Sartre and Camus-esque existentialism to the story, a sense of the absurd, or the meaning and value of existence. It is clear that the friends shirk the material in favor of the philosophical and search for the distillate essence of life. Readers, you will be in literary paradise; it’s a must-read for literature lovers everywhere.
Thank you to Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for sending me an early copy for review.
They met when they were just goslings, so to speak. Geese are monogamous, by the way (which helped me in figuring out some of the symbolism of the book). Fabienne is aloof, while Agnès is more emotionally dependent on her friend. In fact, Agnès feels that she doesn’t need anyone but Fabienne in her life, to give it meaning, and has no desire to leave the countryside.
The two friends (largely Fabienne) hatch a scheme with an adult teacher when they are just thirteen, and write a lurid, dark tale with his assistance. The book becomes a blockbuster best-seller. Since Fabienne decided that Agnès would claim authorship, Agnès is the one who travels the circuit, and subsequently attends a private boarding school in England (reluctantly), because Fabienne talks her into it. Agnès meets upper class, wealthy girls, an eccentric mentor, and learns a bit about the art and guile of sophistication. Class divides become more apparent to her, although her continued focus is Fabienne, and the desire to return home to her.
“Morning and evening make a day. Days and nights make a week, a month, a life. Drop me into any moment, point me in any direction, and I could retrace my life. Details beget details. With all those details one might hope for the full picture. A full picture of what, though? The more we remember, the less we understand.”
Goose kept me fastened to every page, in a way not unlike the girls’ lives together. There is a definite Sartre and Camus-esque existentialism to the story, a sense of the absurd, or the meaning and value of existence. It is clear that the friends shirk the material in favor of the philosophical and search for the distillate essence of life. Readers, you will be in literary paradise; it’s a must-read for literature lovers everywhere.
Thank you to Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for sending me an early copy for review.
October 21, 2022
mundane, but engrossing! an epitome of no plot, just vibes
November 23, 2022
Watch your backs Elena and Lila
January 1, 2023
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyawn. under no circumstances did this need to be 300+ pages
October 25, 2022
It's easy to see why this is such a runaway hit. Beautifully written, originally plotted. Memory and friendship and a long-gone era reproduced. Yes, disturbing in places, but that's the way art is created. I need to read more from Yiyun Li.
April 12, 2023
Jestem pod wrażeniem wspaniałego stylu autorki, ale także samej historii. Pierwsza połowa była zdecydowanie bardziej angażująca, mimo to i tak jestem pod dużym wrażeniem.
May 7, 2023
I liked this story of a complicated friendship between two girls in the post WWII French
countryside. It won the Pen Faulkner prize and the Tournament of Books this year. I read it for a reading group and it gave us much to discuss.
Agnes is looking back on this friendship with Fabienne. They grew up together with a strange bond. The first chapter sent a tingle up and down my spine. Secrets between two girls, deaths by childbirth. Now Agnes lives in America, loves her ex-GI husband, but has not conceived a child in six years of marriage. She raises geese instead.
Young girls, especially somewhat poorly cared for and ignored young girls, can form such deep but twisted friendships. I was reminded of Elena Ferrante's Elena and her brilliant friend Lila. The bond in this novel is similar with Fabienne being the cruel, almost psychopathic one (like a character in a Patricia Highsmith novel) and Agnes being her willing accomplice.
The plot is best left unmentioned so that any reader can find her own way through as she reads. The writing is iridescent. The author has five previous books of fiction and a memoir. She teaches at Princeton University. I must read more from her!
countryside. It won the Pen Faulkner prize and the Tournament of Books this year. I read it for a reading group and it gave us much to discuss.
Agnes is looking back on this friendship with Fabienne. They grew up together with a strange bond. The first chapter sent a tingle up and down my spine. Secrets between two girls, deaths by childbirth. Now Agnes lives in America, loves her ex-GI husband, but has not conceived a child in six years of marriage. She raises geese instead.
Young girls, especially somewhat poorly cared for and ignored young girls, can form such deep but twisted friendships. I was reminded of Elena Ferrante's Elena and her brilliant friend Lila. The bond in this novel is similar with Fabienne being the cruel, almost psychopathic one (like a character in a Patricia Highsmith novel) and Agnes being her willing accomplice.
The plot is best left unmentioned so that any reader can find her own way through as she reads. The writing is iridescent. The author has five previous books of fiction and a memoir. She teaches at Princeton University. I must read more from her!
November 25, 2022
2.5?
I was promised Ferrante meets Moshfegh. I'd like to ask where? (In Dogs of Summer, that's where) I had no emotional reaction to this story, it just felt flat.
I was promised Ferrante meets Moshfegh. I'd like to ask where? (In Dogs of Summer, that's where) I had no emotional reaction to this story, it just felt flat.
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