The Book Of Goose

Yiyun Li

Fourth Estate £16.99

There are echoes of Elena Ferrante in this riveting portrait of a thwarted friendship between two teenage girls from a poverty-stricken village in rural France after the Second World War. Wherever Fabienne goes, timid Agnès follows. But their bond breaks when a book of short stories that they write together is published – on Fabienne’s say-so – under Agnès’s name only. Told from Agnès’s perspective as an adult, the novel eyes the nature of literary fame and the fallout from emotional manipulation.