THE BOOK OF GOOSE by Yiyun Li

Two inseparable adolescent girls, Agnes and Fabienne, in rural France in the 1950s decide to write a macabre book.  They enlist the help of a man whose wife has died recently in order to get the book published, but actually Fabienne is the author, and Agnes is merely the scribe.  Agnes follows Fabienne’s every lead and seems to have no identity apart from her relationship with Fabienne.  In their conversations, it is evident that Fabienne tells Agnes not only what to do but what to think.  However, when the book is accepted for publication, Fabienne wants no credit whatsoever.  In other words, this is plagiarism with permission.  Agnes goes to Paris to meet with the publisher and eventually moves to England to attend a finishing school for girls, where she becomes somewhat of a rebel in her own right.  Death figures prominently in this book, as it does in the book the girls write, but this is a coming-of-age story in which a one-sided friendship dominates the plot.  Fabienne is not only the creative and somewhat sadistic half of this pair; she is probably brighter than Agnes but has had to abandon formal schooling in order to tend to her family’s farm animals.  Agnes may not be that brilliant but does prove to have a pretty fertile imagination herself, as she writes some stories while the two girls are separated that are her work alone.  As a result, I was never really sure if she didn’t really deserve some, if not most, of the accolades she received for her book.  This novel wasn’t torturous to read, but neither was it engrossing.  Agnes narrates the story as a married adult woman living in the U.S. and reflecting on her friendship with Fabienne, as well as her experiences as a celebrated child prodigy who is presumed to have written a book.  The degree to which these experiences have shaped her life is somewhat nebulous, and it is equally unclear whether Agnes outgrows Fabienne during her time away, or vice versa.