The Book of Goose
By Yiyun Li
Tuesday, May 14th
Li’s fiction since her son’s tragic suicide seems to have catapulted her away from her the Asian roots that define her earlier award-winning fiction. Her latest begins on a pastoral farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where Agnès, known as the “French bride,” lives with her husband without children but with chickens and geese with French names. A letter from her mother announces that Agnès’ childhood best friend, Fabienne, at just 27, is dead in their home village of Saint-Rémy. Agnès has already warned readers, “The name you should pay attention to in this story is Fabienne”; Fabienne’s death gives Agnès the permission to become a writer of truth—her truth, anyway—reclaiming her life, her memories, and her words after unwanted teenage fame as a “faux-prodigy” author. “The real story was beyond our ability to tell: our girlhood, our friendship, our love—all monumental, all inconsequential. The world had no place for two girls like us.” From post-WWII rural France, where there was never enough, to a posh finishing school in England, Li creates an achingly controlled narrative simmering with desperation to be truly seen and heard. -Booklist
This book discussion program is HYBRID. We will meet in the library but you may also attend via Zoom. Email Mike at mike.morris@thehowe.org for an invitation or more information.
Where: Howe Library & Zoom
Room: Murray Room
When: 12:00pm-1:00pm
