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 Novel

The Book of Goose

This paragraph…wow. Genuinely one of the most real depictions of grief I’ve read in a long time, and probably one of the best paragraphs I’ve ever read

(Bre)anne✨

It was October 1952. Fourteen years have passed since then. Soon I will be many decades removed from Fabienne. But years and decades were mere words, made-up names for units of measurement. One pound of potato, two cups of flour, three oranges, but what is the measuring unit for hunger? I am twenty-seven this year, and I will be twenty-eight next year. Fabienne was, is, and will always be twenty-seven. How do I measure Fabienne’s presence in my life—by the years we were together, or by the years we have been apart, her shadow elongating as time goes by, always touching me?

Perhaps I should plan a visit to Saint Rémy. Earl would not grudge me the fare. If I lie on Fabienne’s stone, I wonder if I will feel the same heaviness as we once did. There will be no waiting for her to decide when to stand up and walk away. Any choice will have to be mine: to up and leave, or to remain immobile above her grave forever.

Some people are born with a special kind of crystal instead of a heart. No, I am not talking about witchcraft, but it is a mystery that these people, who look no different than others, can sail through life without illness, injuries, or broken hearts. There was not many of them around, but Fabienne is one. Was. Was one, until she was trapped by childbirth. 

That crystal in place of a heart—it makes things happen. To others.

If a man loves a woman and if the woman dies, will he love her ghost equally?

Life is the most difficult for those who know what they want and also know what makes it impossible for them to get what they want. Life is still difficult, but less so, for those who know what they want but have not realized that they will never get it. It is the least difficult for people who do not know what they want.

“He makes himself sound more important,” Fabienne said. “Men always do that.”

Sometimes you hear people say so-and-so has lived well and so-and-so has had a dull life. They are missing a key point when they say that. Any experience is experience, any life a life. A day in a cloister can be as dramatic and fatal as a day on a battlefield.

Some people only count what they seek as life: fame, wealth, adventure, happiness. What they make happen, to others and to thenselves, and what they make impossible, for others and for themselves. To me, anything that happens is life. A fly dropped dead in the soup is as strange and laughable as a marriage proposal from a mere acquaintance — both happened to me, neither sought by me.

Am I passive? I have noticed that Americans are quick to call a person passive, which is never meant as a compliment. Some of my husband's family think of me as passive. I am not what they thought a Frenchwoman should be like. As far as I can see, people handing out this verdict freely are those for whom any external movement is a sign of decisiveness, personal strength, virtue. But my chickens, with their small brains, never seem to tire of walking around, pecking, cooing, clawing. 

"Do I get to see Paris a little?" I asked.

"But yes, of course," Mlle Boverat said. "What do you want to see?"

What do you want to see? What do you want to eat? What do you want to know? These questions, seemingly innocuous, are more unreasonable than people realize. If you asked a cow, or a pig, or a chicken what it wanted to do with its life, it would have no idea how to answer, even if by some miracle it could understand and speak our language. If you asked a cow, or a pig, or a chicken how it would like to die, it would not fare any better.

Am I making everything on this trip sound easy? Am I painting myself as, in M. Bazin's words, a natural — impersonating a child prodigy? But here is an explanation maybe, for the success of my trip. Life is most diffcult for those who know what they want and also know what makes it impossible for them to get what they want. Life is still difficult, but less so, for those who know what they want but have not realized that they will never get it. It is the least difficult for people who do not know what they want.

I did not know what I wanted on this trip to Paris. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that most of my life l have benefited from not knowing. Some people have to figure out what they want from a life before they commit to that life. Some, like me, can commit to anything, which is Iike committing to nothing. Perhaps that is why my American relatives call me passive. 

The Book of Goose quotes

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