The Book of Goose

This was a very frustrating read for me, because I wanted so badly to love it and just couldn't. It's a book with many qualities that I'm drawn to: clever prose, intense adolescent female friendship, an English boarding school. But as a reader who loves characters, I found the central pair of friends (teenagers Agnes and Fabienne, living in rural poverty in France after World War 2) challenging to connect with in different ways. Agnes, the narrator, is a void where a personality should be. She's mostly defined in opposition to Fabienne, but in ways that feel very surface level: Fabienne is active, Agnes is passive. Fabienne is willful, Agnes subsumes her will to Fabienne's. Fabienne is impetuous, Agnes is reserved. You may think that Fabienne is the more interesting character and you would be right, but we only see her through Agnes's eyes and Agnes seems to find her inscrutable, or at least inarticulable. The writing almost feels like it undercuts any emotional power the novel threatens to demonstrate, often refusing to let story beats breathe before making a droll comment on them. It just never came together to draw me in.