

An examination of friendship, poverty, feminine ambivalence, and death, Li’s novel is most concerned with the nature of stories themselves: where they come from, how they function, and who they belong to.Īlso, Rachel Aviv, author of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us, returns to recommend Louis Sass’s Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought. Together the two girls composed a book of stories, but, at Fabienne’s urging, Agnès posed as the sole author when the book was eventually published, setting the course of their lives in two very different directions. Now living in America, many years later, she recounts the devotion and creativity she shared with her best friend, Fabienne, when they were young. Kafka’s story contains nearly every feature of modernism that will be discussed in class, including de-realization, dehumanization (disappearance of the active self) uncertainty or multiplicity of point of view, detachment.

A tale of a passionate friendship between two adolescent girls set in a rural village in postwar France, The Book of Goose is told from the perspective of Agnès. Kate Wolf speaks with celebrated author Yiyun Li about her latest novel, The Book of Goose. Subscribe on Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloudĭo you love listening to the LARB Radio Hour? Support the production of this weekly podcast on books, art, and culture.
