Agnes and Fabienne are best friends growing up in the poor French farming community of Saint Remy. Fabienne is a provocateur- easily bored and always creating new “games” for them to play. Agnes’s job is to follow directions and ask questions.

One day Fabienne tells Agnes that they should write a book. Fabienne narrates and Agnes records the story in her precise handwriting. Fabienne suggests they reach out to the local postman to help with the book. He takes some convincing but Fabienne convinces M. Devreaux to help out and soon the girls are to meet their publisher in Paris. Or actually just Agnes is to meet the publisher because Fabienne has insisted that Agnes be listed as the sole author of the book.

Agnes, who has never left Saint Remy, soon is traveling to Paris for press meetings and meetings with her publisher. An English director of a “finishing school” for girls sees Agnes as a cause celebre, and convinces her publisher and parents that Agnes should come to England to get a proper education. Ms. Townsend capitalizes on Agnes’s publicity for her school, trying convince her to write her 3rd book about the school environment. “Agnes in Paradise”, she suggests as the title.

One day I would learn that Mrs. Townsend was a good record keeper. Of her own life and, for the duration when I was under her supervision, my life. People like Mrs. Townsend, who are obsessed with keeping a full account of their lives, are like artists who create optical illusions. A year is a year anywhere, a day is a day for everyone, and yet with a few tricks these archivists make others believe that they have packed something into their days, something precious, enviable, everlasting, that is not available to everyone.

Agnes hates the school and misses Fabienne and plots to leave. Eventually she gives up everything to return to Saint Remy.

I have summarized above the outline of the narrative but it is not really the subject of the book. I’m not fully sure what the book is about. On one hand it tells the story of an intimate friendship between two girls. Fabienne’s slightly sadistic dominance and Agnes’s total willingness to follow makes reading a cringe-worthy experience. Even though we know from the first chapter that Agnes survives and ends up happily married in America, her journey and the dynamics of their relationship are difficult to read.

Li had moments of great poetry in her observations of the every day.

In the cab I looked at the streetlamps through the rain. I had never watched waterdrops elongating on a glass pane from inside a car. When it moved forward the water streaks changed direction. Back at home rain was simply rain. In this new life, raindrops and streetlamps and the dark shapes of bare-limbed trees all seemed to have something to say to me, but if they were to speak, it would be in English, a language that was still foreign

Like the two girls, Li brought great imagination to the unexpected events which would allow these girls to escape their seeming lot in life. As Agnes explains, coming back from her first trip to Paris,

But here is an explanation, maybe, for the success of my trip. Life is most difficult for those who know what they want and also know what makes it impossible for them to get what they want. Life is still difficult, but less so, for those who know what they want but have not realized that they will never get it. It is the least difficult for people who do not know what they want.

Although the book is not a pleasurable read, I appreciated its moments of clarity and insight. I give this book 4👍🏼 out of 5👍🏼.