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This post is a review of The Book of Goose by author Yiyun Li.
I adored this novel. I saw it on a list of 'best fiction books of 2022' and the cover, title, and the praise it received piqued my interest enough to pick it up at my local library. The blurb didn't really sell it to me, and I thought I might be in for a pleasant but generally okay reading experience. Boy was I wrong. This book blew my mind, it was so lovely.
Acclaim and Accolades for The Book of Goose
Winner of the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Long-listed for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A Slate Top Ten Book of the Year
A TIME Best Fiction Book of 2022
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, Financial Times, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Buzzfeed, and more.
What is The Book of Goose about?
This novel reads as a memoir of sorts. It tells the story of a friendship between two young girls, Agnes and Fabienne, living in a rural postwar French town. At its opening, Agnes is now grown and living in America, having long lost touch with her girlhood best friend, Fabienne.
The story opens with the news of Fabienne's death, propelling Agnes back to that time they shared and the profound impact it had on her life both then and now. She takes us along for the ride as she relives that one particularly eventful year in their lives that would lead to Agnes' greatest adventure and her most profound loss.
For me, this is a story about the blurred lines of true intimacy. When two wills are so intertwined it's difficult to see when one ends and the other begins. It's as exciting as it is frightening, and it's all-encompassing.
It's this obsessed form of love that I find to be at the center of this novel and it's so interesting to see it uncovered. There is the deep anticipation of knowing that a love such as this can only end in tragedy, but that does little to prepare you for the eventuality of its demise.
This is a beautiful story of love and friendship. It's also a story about self-abandonment and the threads of how all these many parts weave themselves into our lives. I enjoyed the look back from an adult Agnes to give this full perspective- in the girl she was then, we can see the seeds for the woman she is now.
Storyline (Blurb) of The Book of Goose
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 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.
What I Liked About This Book
The Writing
Particularly the simplicity of the writing. This story is told so simply it makes you believe you could have written it. But I at least know that I couldn't have.
It's also written beautifully. The sentences flow and the whole thing feels lyrical but not glaringly so. It's so subtle. Everything is so subtle and that's where its true brilliance is.
The Characters
The story, told from Agnes' point of view, centers around Agnes and Fabienne's friendship. So they are the two most important characters and they are both so complete. They have depth and enough layers to make them as real as you and I. I'm most impressed that Fabienne could feel just as real, existing to us only as told by Agnes through her memory.
The additional characters are equally fleshed out, even if the fullness of their stories doesn't make it onto the page. I feel like I know enough about the boarding school caretaker and the headmistress, for example, to fully animate them.
The Pace
The tempo of how everything happens in this story is so natural, it's almost unremarkable. Yet again, this is the brilliance. Nothing is too slow or too fast, it's all just uncovered as it's meant to, taking us along effortlessly.
The Landscapes
This book is set in the rural French countryside, then very briefly in London and Paris, and then in a private home turned boarding school in Pennsylvania. While this story doesn't rely heavily on these landscapes, they are still painted beautifully and create a full backdrop without taking anything away from the story.
Everything, All At Once
When something is really good, it's difficult to say why. I find that to be the case here. I know I loved the story, I know the characters were wonderful and whole, I know the pace was great, and the various scenes were painted with an expert brush.
But are these things the reason the book is great? Yes and no. All these things are necessary and they work together to create a great story, but what is truly magnificent about this book is the experience that all those parts came together to create.
That experience is my highest praise and it's this: I picked it up and didn't want to put it down until it was over, and then I felt a sense of loss.
What I Disliked About This Book
Precious Little
It would be fair to say I loved this book. So, it's quite difficult for me to find things that I didn't like about it. It's also quite frustrating because I pride myself on giving fair critiques, and part of that feels like pointing out at least some things that were handled poorly because most books have them.
But, I also pride myself on being honest and I can't make up faults where I see none. So, I'm basically going to leave this section blank because I can't think of a single thing to put here.
Oh, I just thought of one: what I disliked most about this book is that it ended.
Verdict: 4.5 Stars
This is a brilliant book written by a seasoned author whose experience shines in all the subtleties of this story. She doesn't beat us over the head with anything grand and yet the end result is just that. It reads like a masterpiece and simultaneously like a simple story told unassumingly by a halfhearted narrator at some park bench. If that is not brilliance, I don't know what is.
If you have eyes to read, you should pick up this book. I don't think it has a target audience. It's just good and it's good for everyone. I highly recommend it. I will be investing time into her previous works because this is an author whose voice I love and if this book is anything to go by, I'll enjoy her other offerings as well.
Let me know if you pick it up and what you think of it.
Other Books by Yuyin Li:
Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yuyin Li
Must I Go
Where Reasons End
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
The Story of Gilgamesh
Kinder Than Solitude
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
The Vagrants
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Happy reading and talk soon,
Nonjabulo
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