Book Club Guide

The Book of Goose

by Yiyun Li · 2022 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Authorship and fraud — whose name goes on the book
Female friendship as the most intense relationship of a life — and its asymmetries
Postwar rural France as a world that produces and then discards its prodigies

About this book

Two girls in postwar rural France collaborate on a book of brutal, brilliant stories that becomes a literary sensation — credited to only one of them. Decades later, the other reflects on what their friendship and their fraud cost each of them. Li's PEN/Faulkner-shortlisted novel is about authorship, female friendship and the specific violence of being used by someone you love.

Published in 2022, The Book of Goose was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Li, who writes in English though Mandarin is her first language, has described the novel as exploring questions of authorship and authenticity that resonate with her own relationship to language.

Discussion questions

The book the girls write together is credited to only one of them. How does Li develop this fraud — and what does it reveal about who gets to be an author and whose voice is considered valuable?
The friendship between Agnès and Fabienne is intensely unequal — one dominates, one follows. How does Li develop this power dynamic — and what does it cost each of them over decades?
The novel moves between the girls' childhood in rural France and Agnès's adult reflection from elsewhere. How does this retrospective structure work — and what does the distance in time reveal?
The 'stories' the girls write are described as brutal and unchildlike. What is Li saying about where this material comes from — and about what children understand that adults assume they don't?
The Book of Goose was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award. What does it do — and how does it compare to Li's earlier fiction about isolation and the cost of connection?