Ink & Drink Book Club Questions: The Book of Goose

The book of goose

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Our October Ink & Drink book club choice was Yiyun Li's The Book of Goose, a "propulsive, seductive new novel about friendship, exploitation and intimacy":

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnes, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised - the place that Fabienne helped Agnes escape ten years ago. Now, Agnes is free to tell her story.

As children in a backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves - until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnes on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A dark, ravishing tale winding from the rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnes can live without her past. The Book of Goose is a story of intimacy and obsession, friendship and rivalry perfect for fans of Elena Ferrante, Ottessa Moshfegh and Kamila Shamsie.

Let us help you discover the novel with our Ink & Drink questions:

1. The novel quickly develops Fabienne and Agnes' friendship by detailing their philosophical discussions and debates about life. At one point when discussing God, they question how He decides between two equal and opposite prayers, with Agnes describing that they were not atheists, because "you had to believe that God existed so you could make mischief and upend his plans". What do the girls find faith in instead of Christianity?

2. The adult Agnes questions how to measure Fabienne's presence in her 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". How do you think the novel compares the nature of friendship against familial and romantic relationships?

3. "No one is born a myth. Later, some people are smart enough to turn themselves into myths. Yet what is myth but a veil arranged to cover what is hideous or tedious?" Why do you think the girls feel the need to consistently play games and make up stories?

4. "We forgive many people for what they cannot do for us, but not our mothers. People often forget that it is a gamble to be a mother; I am not a gambler." What do you make of the novel's comments on motherhood?

5. Why do you think the novel is called The Book of Goose?

6. What do you make of the dynamic between Agnes and Fabienne?

7. "Can a zoo animal be happier being observed in a cage than being allowed to roam with the other animals in the forest?" How do you think Agnes is changed by her stay in England?

8. "Where does the desire to be right lead one, except to the wrong place?" The novel has been described as an existential fable. What do you think the morals of the story are? What is the fable being told here?

9. The novel questions the meaning of happiness, and how we might achieve it. Agnes describes it as “to spend every day without craning one’s neck to look forward to tomorrow, next month, next year, and without holding out one’s hands to stop every day from becoming yesterday.” Do you agree with this definition? How would your definition of happiness differ?

10. Ultimately, Agnes tells both her own story and that of Fabienne. What does the novel say about who has the right to tell stories?

Nov 29th Ink & Drink Book Club: 6.30pm The Mountain Lion

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For our next Ink & Drink book club, held on Wednesday 29th November, we will be reading Jean Stafford's The Mountain Lion, which was originally published in 1947 and has been described as "one of the strangest and angriest novels of the twentieth century".

About the book:

Ralph and Molly are inseparable siblings: united against the stupidity of daily routines, their prim mother and prissy older sisters, the world of adult authority. One summer, they are sent from their childhood home in suburban Los Angeles to their uncle's Colorado mountain ranch, where they write, hunt, roam.

But this untamed wilderness soon becomes tainted by dark stirrings of sexual desire - and as the pressures of growing up drive an irrevocable rift between them, their innocent childhoods hurtle towards a devastating end...