The Book of Goose cover art

The Book of Goose

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The Book of Goose

By: Yiyun Li
Narrated by: Caroline Hewitt
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About this listen

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, 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 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 dark, ravishing tale winding from the rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès 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

©2022 Yiyun Li (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Coming of Age Fiction Friendship Historical Fiction France

Critic Reviews

"The surface of Yiyun Li's prose is deceptively still, but just beneath the surface is sadness, pain and tragedy… Yiyun Li has grown into one of our major novelists." (Salman Rushdie)

"Li writes with a shimmering and deeply felt precision." (Guardian)

"Li is extraordinary…a storyteller of the first order…Li inhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion that one one cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents." (Junot Díaz)

What listeners say about The Book of Goose

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

So much promise - so little pay off

Fantastic source material, terribly written in terms of plotting and characterisation. The voice actor’s failed french accent drove me to distraction for the first few hours of the book and I had a hard time getting in to it. I left and returned to it multiple times over six months, finally listening to it whilst too unwell to search for a new novel. The novel gained some momentum in the final hours, although the ending failed to offer much pay off in terms of greater insight gained from the perspectives of distance and time. Listen to the preview before making the decision to buy. Perhaps Google a couple of online reviews also.

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A bit tiring to get through

I felt the repetition of a small number of characters extended the story without adding to it.

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