Description
Winner of the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
‘A dazzling, subtle, skilful knockout – I loved it’ Charlotte Mendelson
‘One of our finest living authors … propulsively entertaining’ New York Times
‘Wonderfully strange and alive’ Jon McGregor
A propulsive, seductive new novel about friendship, exploitation and intimacy from the prize-winning author of Where Reasons End
Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised – the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès 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 Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.
‘Beguiling … A shimmering, unsettling tale of exploitation and manipulation’ Daily Mail
‘Haunting and strange … Li has made her style her own’ Tessa Hadley, Guardian
‘A dazzling, subtle, skilful knockout’ Charlotte Mendelson, author of The Exhibitionist
