Description

‘A dazzling, subtle, skilful knockout – I loved it’ Charlotte Mendelson
‘One of our finest living authors … propulsively entertaining’ New York Times
‘Wonderfully strange and alive’ Jon McGregor

A propulsive, seductive new novel about friendship, exploitation and intimacy from the prize-winning author of Where Reasons End

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnes, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised – the place that Fabienne helped Agnes escape ten years ago. Now, Agnes is free to tell her story.

As children in a backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves – until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnes on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A dark, ravishing tale winding from the rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnes can live without her past. The Book of Goose is a story of intimacy and obsession, friendship and rivalry perfect for fans of Elena Ferrante, Ottessa Moshfegh and Kamila Shamsie.

‘Beguiling … A shimmering, unsettling tale of exploitation and manipulation’ Daily Mail

‘Brilliant … A novel of deceptions and cruelty’ Spectator

‘For all its surface lushness, this is a novel of meticulous philosophical inquiry…resonant with echoes of… My Brilliant Friend, as well Elizabeth Strout… electrifying’ Observer

Publisher Review

Praise for The Book of Goose: 'A dazzling, subtle, skilful knockout - I loved it' Charlotte Mendelson, author of The Exhibitionist 'Yiyun Li perceives human behaviour with a rinsing clarity. An ambitious and profound book' Clare Pollard, author of Fierce Bad Rabbits 'In a story about love and creation, Yiyun Li slips in a satire of the business of marketing authors. The Book of Goose is deft and delicious' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days 'Yiyun Li has, again, done something new and gone somewhere wonderfully strange and alive. The Book of Goose is beautiful, sad, funny and claustrophobic. This is not a novel 'about' anything more than the two young souls at its heart, Agnes and Fabienne. Which is to say: it's about the deep mystery at the heart of us all that we spend a lifetime trying to solve' Jon McGregor, author of Lean Fall Stand 'A haunting novel about loss, friendship and storytelling, Book of Goose proves, again, that few writers match Yiyun Li's ability to explore human desire and ambition. This new work broadens the canvas of one of the great writers of our time' Tash Aw, author of Strangers on a Pier '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 Praise for Yiyun Li: 'One of our major novelists' Salman Rushdie, author of Midnight's Children 'Li has the talent, the vision and the respect for life's insoluble mysteries ... [she] is the real deal' Michel Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White