The Book of Goose

The news of Fabienne’s death reaches Agnès in America — infinitely far from the remote French village where their childhood once unfolded. In the postwar years, amid ruin and hardship, the two girls created a secret universe of their own, hidden from the eyes of others, where imagination became both their greatest weapon and their closest ally.
From the outside, Agnès’s story resembles a fairy tale: yesterday’s village shepherdess suddenly becomes a sensational Parisian writer, with the doors of exclusive English boarding schools and high society swinging open before her. But was that fame the result of genuine talent, or merely of subtle manipulation? Only now, when Fabienne is gone, is Agnès ready to reveal the truth and tell the story in her own voice.
It is a sweeping journey through memory, leading the reader from the postwar provinces to glamorous Paris and then to a quiet home in Pennsylvania, where the heroine finally tries to let go of her past.

The Book of Goose is a brilliant novel about fate, art, intimacy, and psychological games by Yiyun Li, the acclaimed American writer and Princeton professor.