by Yiyun Li
First published 2022
Agnès receives word that Fabienne is dead. The news reaches her in America, far from the French countryside where they grew up together. Ten years have passed since Fabienne helped Agnès leave that place behind. Now Agnès can finally tell what really happened between them. As girls in their war-torn village, Agnès and Fabienne created a secret world that belonged only to them. Then Fabienne devised a scheme that would transform everything. Her plan catapulted Agnès into a life of recognition and wealth, but also brought devastating consequences. The journey took Agnès from their rural French town to Paris, then to an English boarding school, and eventually to the quiet Pennsylvania house where she now lives, trying to escape her history. Yiyun Li traces the complex bond between two friends across decades and continents. She examines how childhood relationships shape us and how memory preserves both love and betrayal. This story reveals the price of artistic success and the weight of surviving when others cannot.
Genres: literary-fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: France, Pennsylvania, Paris, English Boarding School
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
369 pages · Kindle Edition · Fourth Estate