I can't say this book was a joy to read; I found it quite sad and tragic frequently. But it is still a beautiful story of childhood best friend dynamics and how childish fancies can go further than originally intended. 

Agnès has just learned her childhood Fabienne is dead. (No, this isn't a spoiler.) They grew up together for a time in rural France, but eventually became estranged and their lives went different directions (Fabienne stayed in France while Agnès went to America). Agnès has decided that her old friend's death is the occasion that warrants revealing a childhood secret involving herself and Fabienne. She reveals their story excruciatingly slowly (I love a slow burn) and we find out that Agnès was no less than obsessed with Fabienne growing up. The dynamic was such that Fabienne made the decisions for the two of them every time they were together, and Agnès felt unable to make a decision for herself.

"Some people might wonder why Fabienne alone took up all my attention, as there must have been other schoolmates who would have made better friends. Some people might wonder why she chose me, when I seemed to offer her little other than obedient companionship. Surely there were other children, endowed with strong personalities, who would have been better matches for her. But people asking these questions do not understand children. Either they have had an insipid childhood, or, worse, they are determined to make childhood insipid in retrospect, so they become people who talk to children as if they were larvae or pupae. And if you are one of those people, I can assure you that many children you dismiss are more interesting than you are. And they despise you, rightly so." (p. 107)

Fabienne makes a choice one day that will change the course of their lives.

They will write stories and books together; Fabienne will be the creative mind while Agnès dutifully pens them. With a little help from an adult figure, they publish a book together, under Agnès' name only. This leads to fame from all around: how did a young girl from rural France come up with twisted stories and write so prolifically? Surely she couldn't have been educated or creative enough to come up with those ideas and words without the help from an adult! They write another book together, and Agnès prodigal fame continues to grow. They take her to Paris and eventually to a boarding school in England, where she is endlessly bored and instructed to write about her time in the school. As she spends time on her own away from Fabienne, she develops a creative mind of her own and doesn't want to write such fluff as her experiences at the school. She longs to be back home with Fabienne.

There's a lot of homoerotic subtext present in their relationship, and Agnès is constantly confused about Fabienne's feelings. They write to each other when Agnès is in England, but two letters are written each time: one to/from Fabienne, one to/from Fabienne's brother (Agnès' pretend boyfriend). Alleged proclamations of love confuse Agnès - is Fabienne making up these feelings on behalf of her "brother" or does Fabienne simply not know another way of letting Agnès know her deepest feelings? 

"Nothing is more inexplicable than friendship in childhood. It is not companionship, though the two are often confused. Childhood companionship is forced upon the children: two playmates whose parents like to share a drink on the weekend, a boy and a girl assigned to sit next to each other at school, families renting the neighboring holiday cabins every summer. Childhood friendship, though it has to meet the same geographical and temporal prerequisites, is something rarer: a child does not seek to bond with another child. The bond, defying knowledge and understanding, either is there, or is not; once a bond comes into existence, no child knows how to break from it until the setting is changed. It baffles me that often songs and poems are written about love at first sight: those who claim to experience the phenomena have preened themselves, ready for love. There is nothing extraordinary about that. Childhood friendship, much more fatal, simply happens." (p. 107)

Li reflects on friendships, the passage of time, and how we find meaning in our lives. 

"What’s happiness? she might ask me. 
Happiness, I would tell her, is 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." (pp. 82-83)
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"A long time ago, when the game of writing was only an idea, like the idea of growing happiness, Fabienne said that we should write books together so people would know how it felt to be us. That, I now know, was the only mistake she made. What we wrote was about many things, but how about us. When the books were read by others, we were nowhere to be found. 

The real story was beyond our ability to tell: our girlhood, our friendship, our love — all monumental, all inconsequential. The world had no place for two girls like us, though I was slow then, not knowing that Fabienne, slighted, thwarted, even fatally wounded, tried to make a fool of that world, on her and on my behalf. Revenge is a story that often begins with more promises than the ending can offer." (pp. 347-348)
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"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 crest 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." (p. 174)

This is a unique coming-of-age story and a reflection on the friendships/relationships that shape us throughout our lives. It will stick with me for a while, and I'll share one more quote that stuck out to me:

"I now know that so much of our story began with Fabienne’s exultation and despair both out of my reach. For as long as I could be the outlet of her exultation and her despair, life was bearable, even interesting, to her. I was the whetstone that sharpened her mind’s blade; I was the organ that she cut into effortlessly. All the same I could not save us. It was not boredom that defeated us, it was not defeat that made us drift apart. Not every child is born with an untamable force within her. It is the world’s job to avert its eyes, writing that force off as childish tantrum, as immaturity. It is a child’s job to forbear that force until she, too, can write it off and sail into a safer adulthood. Fabienne had no words to describe her exultation and despair, and I had no way to grasp them, but she was not alone in her extremes. The lucky ones have waited out the storms. The really lucky ones who have learned a few tricks to tame the untamable — however momentarily — have made their names. I am not sophisticated enough to claim that I understand their geniuses, but I know what they have put in their symphonies and concertos, what they have put on their canvases or in their books, is what made Fabienne shriek in the cemetery. Through her hands I had heard her pain: there was something immense in her, bigger, sharper, more permanent, than the life we lived. She could neither find nor make a world to accommodate that immense being." (pp. 340-341)