The Book of Goose: A Novel

Written by Yiyun Li

Narrated by Caroline Hewitt

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.

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 Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250868893

Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University.

Reviews for The Book of Goose

[JC lynch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hated the narration. Read rather than listen to the book

[across12 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ugh, that accent. No one speaks like that except in old b&w movies, let alone a former peasant girl from France.

[Kel Snow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A glimpse into girlhood and grief. A fantastic read that is very much worth its praise!

[Chris Chang · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not too bad, but a bit over melodramatic for its own good. And the accent is highly unnecessary and distracting.

[Barry Moorman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I very much enjoyed this story and am looking forward to reading more by this author. Thanks

[Вера Ролле · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Unlike anything I’ve read before, such a unique and beautiful work

[louisa_sevillano · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nice writing style and good narration but very slow and slightly boring.