Very easy to read and the plot kept me reading, but in the end, I’m not sure I understood it. ( )

i don't get it ( )

3.75/5 stars rounded to 4 stars

I found the first third of this book to be brilliant and was thoroughly invested in Fabienne and Agnes's relationship. However, as the story progressed, I felt as if I was growing distant from the connection I had immediately made with those two characters. I couldn't help but feel that the back end of this book felt rushed. For a book just under 350 pages, it didn't feel like a whole lot happened.. or rather, a lot happened but none of it felt overly impactful. There was so much more that I wanted from these characters and this narrative, but none of those things were fully fleshed out or brought to light. I'm eager to read more of Yiyun Li's work as I found her writing incredibly stunning. While I did really enjoy this book, I think I just expected a tad bit more. ( )

Agnés and Fabienne were wild children, outcasts by choice, daring all, at least in their own minds. Years later, Agnés reflects on what made Fabienne so special and how their hopes and dreams, which were really Fabienne’s hopes and dreams, got tangled in the grasping aspirations of adults in the “real” world. Even the lovely idea of writing a book together gets corrupted. Though perhaps Fabienne could see what might be coming when she chose to insist that no one know of her involvement in Agnés’ stories.

Most of this novel is a linear remembrance by Agnés of those few years of their youth when she catapulted to fame as a supposed child prodigy author. But her greatest regret was that their game ended up separating these two bosom friends. Agnés endures mistreatment and worse at the hands of adults in Paris and later in England. Always though she longs to return to her friend, Fabienne.

This is wonderful writing by Yiyun Li. Fresh and alive, yet as might be expected, full of insight into the very nature of composition and creativity and more. I found Agnés’ story to be fully captivating, though I wished there were more of Fabienne especially in the latter half of the novel. Her driving force, once removed, cuts both Agnés and the novel adrift, at the mercy of a thoroughly unpleasant character in Mrs Townsend. And this probably contributes to the feeling that the ending is less than what one might hope. Even you can’t put your finger on exactly what it is you were hoping for.

Easily recommended, though with slight reservations. ( )

An absolutely lovely novel that takes a premise that's already pretty interesting on its face -- a pair of French country girls conspire to write a book of short stories shortly after the end of the Second World War -- and goes to unexpectedly deep, and often sad, places. It's clear from the book's opening that Agnés and Fabienne are a pair: Agnés, our narrator, even cops to being Fabienne's "whetstone." But while Fabienne is the duo's real talent, she's also barely literate: Agnés acts as both her amanuensis and as her public face. Later events suggest that the girls' literary experiment doesn't work when Agnés is left on her own, but that just provides an opportunity for the author to get at her deeper themes. This isn't just a book about fake child prodigies, and there's a lot more going on here than a friendship between two lonely, talented girls.

There's also the tricky question of time. The girls' friendship is intense, but I suspect it might not be any less intense than the friendships that many other girls' their age have before the rest of their lives -- love, sex, work, responsibility and maybe children -- rushes in. In "The Book of Goose" Fabienne and Agnés exist in a sort of liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and what they have is necessarily fragile and fleeting. They're both smart enough to know it. What impressed me most about "The Book of Goose" is that Fabienne's talent is also framed in similar terms. Fabienne has no real desire to be a famous literary type: for her, telling stories is a game. But the game that the girls are playing cannot survive its own inherent contradictions: both separation and exposure would spell its end.

There's a larger story here about the nature of genius and the precarity of all of our lives. The author presents genius as a wondrous, alchemical quality, dependent both on raw talent and on the emotional and social resources that are necessary to give it shape. Fabienne seems to have the sort of detachment that great writers often display in their works, but the fact that she can't really take ownership of her own voice is telling. It's also worth noting that Agnés and Fabienne's story is further marked by other seemingly random tragedies. While the end of their precocious literary career can be seen as another sort of tragedy, the book's two main protagonists are no strangers to misfortune or injustice. By the time we reach the end of the book, it seems a small miracle that Fabienne's untutored literary mind and the girls' difficult life circumstances produced so much as a book of short stories and a close friendship. The world that Li describes in "The Book of Goose" is one that constantly forecloses on our most dazzling possibilities even as it offers us other ways to survive. To say that I found this book unbearably sad verges, if that's possible, on understatement.

I also noted that Li herself is a Chinese-American, currently on the faculty at Princeton, who has lived an interesting and in many ways accomplished life. I could find anything in her biography, however, that might connect her to this novel's rural French setting. Seen from that perspective, "The Book of Goose" is a truly impressive product of the imagination. I was deeply impressed by how well the author evoked a time in which the French countryside felt worlds away from any place of real importance. To avoid all of the usual "life in Provence" clichés would have been more than enough, but this one's a real time machine. It's is one of those works that examines the question of literary talent while, at the same time, announcing its presence. In other words, "The Book of Goose" is a very good novel, and Yiyun Li is the real thing. ( )