The Book of Goose

A Novel

By: Yiyun Li

Narrated by: Caroline Hewitt

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where a woman can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a story of disturbing intimacy and obsession, of exploitation and strength of will, 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 Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2022 Yiyun Li (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Exquisite . . . Knives, minerals, oranges, and the game of Rock Paper Scissors sneak into Agnès’ narrative as she relates the trajectory of a once-unbreakable union. The relative hardness of those substances is a clue to understanding it all. Stunners: Li’s memorable duo, their lives, their losses.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Bringing to mind Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, by way of Anita Brookner’s quietly dramatic prose, [The Book of Goose] makes for a powerful Cinderella fable with memorable characters. It’s an accomplished new turn for Li.”—Publishers Weekly

2023 PEN/Faulkner Award - Winner, Short-listed
2022 Buzzfeed Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 BookPage Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 New Yorker Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 Los Angeles Times Holiday Books Guide, Long-listed
2022 Slate Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 Time Magazine Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 Slate Book Review Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2022 San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, Long-listed
2022 Powell's Best Books of the Year, Long-listed
2023 PEN/Faulkner Award - Nominee, Short-listed

Hard yet magical

It was hard to follow the author at the beginning who is talking? What are they talking about?….

However, once the story began to clearly unfold, it was a lot of fun to try to predict where the protagonist would end up.

The resolution of the story is so true of love before our current societal acceptance. It seems like so long ago that this resolution was so often the case… however it was just a few years ago.

Story not for me, but good narrator

This book was not for me. I had to battle to get through it and should have just given up. There was barely a plot if any at all. (This was the consensus of our book club). However, the narrator did a great job so want to give them props.

How French

People use others to find meaning. They imitate, cut down, one up, hate, aspire. But what is “real” life? What was “real” friendship? —How French!

French words for a French girl writing a French story on friendship: marionette and facade.

Agnès our junior high protagonist longs for friendship and connection with one person, her childhood friend, Fabienne. She let herself be puppet-ed, volleyed about, changed, and even chased away. She ends the life we know of her, sometime after the death of Fabienne, by writing a book reflecting on Fabienne’s influence in her life.

Fabienne, a sociopathic savant, desired control and to create chaos. I am happy she wasn’t born with higher station and access to more levers of power. With a blade in her teeth, having climbed higher in the tree than Agnès, Fabienne speaks to Agnes after Agnès has left all to return home to be with Fabienne,

“That poor old man, Mr. Deveaux, said that ‘We [Fabienne and Deveaux], are too smart for this world, but that we wouldn’t have pulled off anything successful without an idiot like you [Agnès].’”

Reflecting, how does Agnès process what she loved so purely and longed for genuinely and truly enjoyed as hers, when in the perspective of Fabienne—trapped by her anger and depression and despair while being also so special and smart, Agnès was but a toy to be used and tossed away?

Great Novel! Poor Narration

What an epic friendship, devastating and intense. Mrs Townsend is a great villain, and the main characters are perfectly drawn. Unfortunately, the narrator of this audiobook struggled tremendously with multiple kinds of accents, all of which were poorly done and kept bleeding into one another. Such an annoying distraction.

Historical fiction at its finest

If you enjoy historical fiction The Book of Goose is one not to miss. Set in post-war France, this book is about friendship, coming of age and despair.