What a fascinating story, somewhat hindered by its own repetitive imagery, lack of emotional depth, and, ironically, opaqueness.

The Book of Goose has so many qualities I adore in literary fiction - a sparse yet stunning writing style, a character-focused narrative, and an unnerving strangeness and unreliability.

But while by all measures, I should have loved this novel, it left me somewhat cold.

This story focuses on Fabienne and Agnès, two young French peasant girls living in a small village after WWII, who are in what appears to be a deeply unequal and codependent friendship, driven by Fabienne's manipulative, forceful personality. Fabienne, as told by Agnès in retrospect, seems psychopathic; she lies and manipulates, casually kills animals, plays cruel pranks on other children, and spends much of her time obsessively crafting stories about the murder of infants and bestiality.

Agnès, on the other hand, is remarkably passive, almost to the point of unbelievability. The narrative often feels detached, with Agnès recounting events with an unnerving lack of emotion. Whether intentional or not, she feels less like a protagonist and more like an empty vessel, defined solely by her obsession with Fabienne - who feels much more alive.

The dynamic between these two characters is concerning, as Agnès is infatuated with Fabienne while Fabienne exploits her feelings. Over time, however, my perspective on their relationship shifted. Not only are they heavily queer-coded with many sapphic undertones, but I began to suspect that Agnès may be even more unreliable than she first appears - who can say what is real and what is fiction? From whom do the most disturbing ideas originate? Who is the leader, and who is the follower?

Perhaps the author intended this to be a story of obsessive friendship, but their feelings appear much deeper than platonic obsession and more like a repressed romantic love that can never be. As a story of young queer girls trying to escape the reality they exist in that leaves no space for their identities and love, this is a more poignant read. As a story of obsessive friendship, it falls a little flat, at least for this reader.

While the first third had great momentum and deeply intrigued me despite my frustration with Agnès' apparent lack of human emotion or agency, the book's middle section in England slows down the narrative significantly. With Agnès at school, separated from Fabienne and only getting occasional letters, the story loses direction. Fabienne's absence highlights how bland Agnès really is - and the characters at the boarding school did little to replace Fabienne's magnetic presence in the story or in Agnès' life.

Despite the beauty of the prose, I found myself frustrated by repetitive imagery—especially the endless comparisons to oranges. This metaphor felt forced and pseudo-philosophical, adding little depth to the story. The book seemed preoccupied with its literary aspirations, aiming for a contemplative feel on the boundaries between fiction and reality, love and obsession, and the boundaries between us, but the detached style made the characters feel hollow, and many of the passages meant to be profound were difficult to parse and ultimately rather shallow.

On a thematic level, the novel touches on codependency, manipulation, and toxic love. I appreciate the attempt to reflect the restrictions faced by queer women in repressive times, but it felt excessively nihilistic and overly preoccupied with making a literary statement at the cost of emotional connection. Agnès' narration is so unreliable that by the end, I couldn't help but wonder if she's actually manipulating us, selectively revealing and omitting details to control how we see Fabienne and, by extension, herself.

Though I appreciated the writing style and some of the themes, this book ultimately left me unmoved. There was potential here, and I'm intrigued by the author's literary approach. I look forward to reading more of Yiyun Li's writing in future.


Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for providing an ALC for review. The audio narration and production were well done and enjoyable. All thoughts are my own.

Trigger/Content Warnings: child & infant death, death in childbirth, pedophilia, child abuse (physical and verbal), toxic friendship, self-harm, suicidal ideation, animal cruelty & death, manipulation, stonewalling, confinement, racism, ageism

Also, brief mentions of infant murder, bestiality, suicide, and violent accidental amputation

An okay book. Literary and very lovely, but just not my cup of tea. I find middle school characters who do cruel things "because they're poor" really annoying. This book strongly reminded me of the kind of books I had to read for school in middle school. Very serious, very sad. Really lovely prose, but just really not for me story wise.

This was my first novel by Li, but it won't be my last. I understand the comparisons to the Neapolitan novels, both being beautifully written from the perspectives of young women.

When I sat down to write this review, I was curious about the author, Yiyun Li. I wondered why a Chinese woman had written a book in English set in the rural French countryside about two little white girls with a particularly European perspective. Turns out this is Li's eighth book, and, as she has won many major literary awards, she may just have wanted to take on new challenges of setting or language.

Raised in China, her father a nuclear physicist and her mother a cruel tyrant, Li went to the states to study immunology for a semester while earning a Master's of Science degree from Peking University. Along the way she fell in love with fiction. (She took a creative writing class just to work on her English, but it caused the former math prodigy to change careers.) At 24, she emigrated to the U.S. and cut herself off from China completely, writing only in English and refusing to let any of her work be translated back into Chinese for fear her mother would see it. She earned an MFA in the U.S. and published two collections of short stories and multiple novels, many of them about Chinese or Chinese-American characters. In 2017, she changed course and wrote a memoir, revealing her multiple suicide attempts, including two she made when she was newly married with two young sons, already a successful writer. Six months later, the author's son, Vincent, killed himself at age 16.

Reading Li's backstory led me to discover that I have, in fact, read a book by this author, Where Reason Ends, an autobiographical novel in which the author speaks to her late son. As my own son died in 2016, the subject of how mothers speak to their dead children was of particular interest to me, and that novel was a brilliant examination of grief, longing, and self-blame.

However, it's just as well I didn't make this connection before I started The Book of Goose, a haunting coming-of-age story about two young girls in rural France who have a deeply intense bond that affects their choices but doesn't save them from their fates. One of the girls is an uneducated pig farmer, forced to leave school to care for her brothers and abusive father after her mother dies. The other is a pampered only child with good grades with a mother who plays almost no role in her life. Both the girls are very clever. They are inseparable outside of school, and Fabienne, the farmer, decides they will write a book together, for which Agnes will get the credit. Fabienne has all the ideas and dictates her stories to Agnes, who writes them down.

Eventually, the girls call upon a local retiree to help them get the book out into the world. He is cruel to the girls, insulting them and their work, but he does find them a publisher and the dark, macabre tales are a huge hit (which seems unlikely given that it is 1950s France, but what do I know), which launches Agnes onto the literary circuit and lands her a scholarship at an English boarding school that she hates.

I know people compare this book to Ferrante's series, but I found Ferrante's books dull and this one intriguing. Agnes is so attached to Fabienne she doesn't want to go to boarding school and once there wants only to get back home. She cannot be cowed into caring about the class issues she is supposed to care about at the boarding school; she just wants to be with her best friend again. Fabienne writes Agnes letters as both herself and posing as Agnes' boyfriend, Fabienne's brother, and while posing as a boy, she is able to be explicitly sexual in her letters, something that seems to affect their friendship when she comes back home at last.

In answer to the original question that sent me searching for information on the author, in an interview in The Guardian, Li notes, "the good thing about teenage girls is that it doesn’t matter if they’re in France, or England, or China or Japan – they all have that intensity, that purity and also that sense that the entire world is made by their close connection to another girl.” So perhaps all that mattered was the girls' connection, not where they were.

Ultimately, this is a sad story, opening as it does by telling us that Fabienne died in childbirth in her 20s. So we know before we learn anything else that no matter how wild and intense her friendship was as a young girl, she wound up following a traditional path, dying a traditionally tragic death. Geese are monogamous for life, and I think this novel demonstrates that the girls might have been bonded for life if the lived in a time that would have allowed them to live like that.

Finally, the book raises a question about whether it is morally just to accuse someone of a crime they didn't actually commit if you know their intention was to commit that crime and that they would have committed it given the chance. I think in the case presented in the book, yes, what the girls did was fair -- but I also think that story was included to show us how heartless the girls were.

Thanks to Netgalley, Farrar Publishers, and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an advance-reader copy of this novel for my honest review. The book was engagingly narrated by Caroline Hewitt.

For the Book of Goose, reading along while listening on audio was the perfect combo. The audio was great, the narrator had a French accent but it was still understandable. It made me feel a greater sense of being in France! Great story about identity and adolescent friendship.

Did not finish at 10 percent on audiobook. I would like to go back and try this book in print. I was interested in the story but had a really hard time staying engaged with the narrator.

The Book of Goose is a story on class and provincialism. 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.

I was given the audiobook copy for review, and enjoyed it overall.

*many thanks to Macmillan Audio for the gifted copy for review

When Agnès receives word in America that her childhood friend Fabienne has died in childbirth in France, Agnès reflects upon their childhood together in postwar France and the events that led Agnès to getting out of their small town, while Fabienne stayed behind.

Despite the fact that Yiyun Li was born in China and lives in the United States, this was a thoroughly French novel. The relationship between Agnès and Fabienne was unique; they were very close, and yet that wasn’t always healthy. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for M. Devaux. I highly recommend this book to fans of literary fiction and character studies.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

“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…”

French teenagers, Agnès and Fabienne, are inseparable. Together, they produce a book called “Les Enfants Heureux” with Agnès transcribing her friend’s dictation.

Agnès leaves Fabienne and the stifling village of Saint Rémy when she is invited to Paris to promote the book. As a celebrity author, she is then sent on to an English finishing school. Meanwhile, Fabienne betrays a friend with a destructive lie which will change lives.

Li, writing in first person narrative as Agnès, explores childhood friendship, growing up, desire, obsession, the distance between fiction and reality, and self-determination.

“The Book of Goose” is told from a point far in the story’s future, by an older Agnès who looks back on their youth together. Li writes beautifully and Caroline Hewitt’s narration is superb.

.This is a razor-sharp look at the damage we can cause to those we claim to love the most, “The Book of Goose” is a profound and dramatic novel.

Unfortunately this was a did-not-finish for me. I listened to twenty minutes of the audiobook but just couldn't get into the story and had no idea what the purpose of it was.... I know others have enjoyed it though, so my opinion is in the minority.

The Book of Goose charts a friendship, a farce, and a child author through the post-Great War French countryside and into the Switzerland of England (Surrey, i guess, they are both rich?). Agnes, our narrator, is obsessive about her friendship with Fabienne, who very apparently does not quite feel the same about Agnes.

There is a deep sense of melancholy and sadness about how closed in the lives of these young girls feel throughout the book. Life in their town feels very suffocating so together they try and plot a way out, but the togetherness is more of an illusion than Agnes supposes.

The English part of works as a commentary on class and provincialism. The schoolmaster comes across as needlessly cruel and her focus is not on those she is trying to help bring up in the world and much more on her own legacy. This part of the novel really starts to drag out as the reunification of Fabienne and Agnes starts to grow nearer and nearer.

If satisfaction or optimism is your goal with reading this, I would look elsewhere as that is not the goal of the author. A slow tragedy.

I really enjoyed the beautiful writing and language of this novel. The plot was good, but I am not a fan of teenager protagonists. I also felt that the deceit throughout the book had no real consequences in the end. The novel gripped me while it took place in the French country side. When it moved to a finishing school in England it became less interesting. A good novel but not memorable. Thank you to Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the advance copy.

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li is a heart-wrenching book about love, childhood, art, and friendship. I'm a mood reader, and if you are too, I definitely recommend making sure you are in the mood for a serious, literary novel when you pick this one up. It might not be for everyone, but I think this book is very impactful and memorable, even haunting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to listen to an ARC of The Book of Goose. This is my honest feedback.

The Book of Goose is a lovely but haunting story of two girls written by the well-known author Yiyun Li. Though her first language is Mandarin, she writes in English. The language is uncomplicated emphasizing the complexity of her story. Two 13-year-old french girls who live in a poor village amuse themselves by telling stories and writing them down. They convince the postmaster to help them get their stories, now a book, published. This is a couple of years before the teenage François Sagan wrote and published her famous book. The book becomes a sensation in Paris and though Fabienne has written most of the stories, she convinces Agnès, our narrator, to take all the credit. Agnès is feted in Paris, and given a guardian who puts her in an English Boarding School. The scenes at the Boarding School are horrific. She manages after seven months to get herself sent home to her poor village. Fabienne had sent her out into the world so that people could understand how they live, and so Agnès could have a more interesting life. But all Agnès wants is to return home and to the friendship.

The friendship is what stays in the reader's mind. We only get one point of view and we see how complicated it is. Everything about this book reads like a fable. Listening to the narrator, Agnès and a number of other characters, is a real treat. She is a terrific narrator. She has many realistic accents and can switch from character to character with ease.

I wasn't sure I would like this book at the beginning but soon, I was captivated. It is a terrific read and I recommend it.

Set in a small town in France, this is a psychologically intriguing story of one young girl’s life. There are complex themes throughout with beautifully descriptive writing. While I liked a lot of what this story had to offer, in the end it felt incomplete.

This felt familiar to another book, My Brilliant Friend. Different from its perspective and delivery but largely focused on a childhood relationship and where that led into adulthood.

It was a curious story that I can only sum up as odd and captivating! A good audio option for those who enjoy a slow-paced coming-of-age story.

Thank you @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for the alc in exchange for an honest review.

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 what to say about 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 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

This is a beautifully written tale of friendship between two teen girls, Agnes and Fabienne, in 1950s France. Based mostly in the countryside of St Rémy, the two friends are growing up in a town of relative poverty that is still deeply affected by the events of the wars. Agnes and Fabienne embark on a book writing project that ultimately sends their lives in two directions temporarily. This course of events will change their outlook, friendship, and futures. I recommend this especially for fans of Elena Ferrante and to those that enjoy coming of age stories set in historical fiction. Thank you to Net Galley for the copy of this audiobook. The narration is very well done.

What an excellent book! It reminded me pleasantly of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND—a beautifully difficult story of two childhood friends, with the narrator believing she is always in the other’s shadow, always trying to live up to her. I highly recommend this!

The Book Of Goose is a shattering, tender read that feels like pouring salt on a wound---the story of Agnès and Fabienne is a great literary feat by Li, though it so real one could even forget it's fiction. A story of friendship, of how love shapes art and how childhood love shapes an entire life, Agnès and Fabienne will break your heart.

An interesting story of friendship and the cost of it. I will admit I never fully invested in the characters and their friendship, but I can see that it is well written and appreciate what the author was trying to do.