What do you think?
Rate this book
Year of the Goose
The era of the tycoon has reached its climax in China. The lives of a snack food heiress, a hair extension magnate, and the nation’s most cherished goose collide in this satirical debut novel.
*
Corporations rise quickly in today’s China, and none are more successful than the Bashful Goose Snack Company. Founded by the self-made Papa Hui, the company is a national treasure, as is his beloved pet goose. Meanwhile, Papa Hui’s daughter, Kelly, is desperate to prove herself to her father, and take her rightful place as the heir to his empire. But Lulu, the woman with the most lustrous hair in China, and Wang Xilai, the disturbed celebrity hair-stylist farming Lulu for extensions, stand in Kelly’s way—not to mention that infernal goose!
From a middle school mogul to a talking turtle, a grotesque “fat camp” for children to a mythical settlement of ex-millionaires, Carly J. Hallman’s vision of a fragmented Chinese society is brimming with bawdy humor and sharp wit. In the absurdist tradition of the great contemporary Chinese author Mo Yan comes a searing, yet whimsical portrayal of wealth and ambition in an ogliarchical, tabloid-driven society, not so unlike our very own.
*
Corporations rise quickly in today’s China, and none are more successful than the Bashful Goose Snack Company. Founded by the self-made Papa Hui, the company is a national treasure, as is his beloved pet goose. Meanwhile, Papa Hui’s daughter, Kelly, is desperate to prove herself to her father, and take her rightful place as the heir to his empire. But Lulu, the woman with the most lustrous hair in China, and Wang Xilai, the disturbed celebrity hair-stylist farming Lulu for extensions, stand in Kelly’s way—not to mention that infernal goose!
From a middle school mogul to a talking turtle, a grotesque “fat camp” for children to a mythical settlement of ex-millionaires, Carly J. Hallman’s vision of a fragmented Chinese society is brimming with bawdy humor and sharp wit. In the absurdist tradition of the great contemporary Chinese author Mo Yan comes a searing, yet whimsical portrayal of wealth and ambition in an ogliarchical, tabloid-driven society, not so unlike our very own.
286 pages, Paperback
First published December 8, 2015
9 people are currently reading
953 people want to read
About the author
Carly J. Hallman
3 books29 followersCarly J. Hallman has a B.A. in Writing & Rhetoric and an M.A. in Screenwriting. She lives in London.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 27, 2015
Obligatory review of one's own book.
October 4, 2015
I read a galley of this deliciously madcap book and blurbed it: "YEAR OF THE GOOSE is a completely fresh and original comic novel overflowing with mayhem, sly and mordant humor, blood-thirsty slapstick, corporate malfeasance, hair extentions, Watermelon Wigglers, an enlightened turtle and a malevolent goose. It is an unhinged and utter delight."
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
December 24, 2015
I started out skeptical. Year of the Goose comes across as a dubious holiday release: it's full of spoiled billionaires, corrupt officials, and rampant consumerism in the Communist heartland. There's death, there's abandonment, there's hallucination and assassination. But Hallman's deep analysis of these actions, of her character's flaws and the origins of their neuroses, left me feeling hope. Hope that the problems of our world can be explained, and that if we can explain what's wrong with the world then we are one step closer to fixing it.
Which is a pretty weird takeaway from a book that's trippy as balls. At the end of the first section, things were so unhinged that I was skeptical there could be a path to redemption. The plot zigzags through the dreams of a hair extension entrepreneur, the dreams of a lazy actress, the dreams of an unlucky goose and a self-immolating turtle/monk. Year of the Goose cleverly exits each of these scenes at the peak of insanity, leaving the reader to explain to himself what all of this means. Thankfully Hallman supplies the right questions along the way to help: "How many selves are in the self? Are the possibilities finite, predetermined, or are they limitless? How many more versions of me might someday write the future stories of my life? What the hell is up with that creepy goose?" Okay...so that last one may be mine.
Recommended for fans of Giacomo Lee's Funereal.
Which is a pretty weird takeaway from a book that's trippy as balls. At the end of the first section, things were so unhinged that I was skeptical there could be a path to redemption. The plot zigzags through the dreams of a hair extension entrepreneur, the dreams of a lazy actress, the dreams of an unlucky goose and a self-immolating turtle/monk. Year of the Goose cleverly exits each of these scenes at the peak of insanity, leaving the reader to explain to himself what all of this means. Thankfully Hallman supplies the right questions along the way to help: "How many selves are in the self? Are the possibilities finite, predetermined, or are they limitless? How many more versions of me might someday write the future stories of my life? What the hell is up with that creepy goose?" Okay...so that last one may be mine.
Recommended for fans of Giacomo Lee's Funereal.
February 6, 2016
Warning: DBR in progress. I going to let Captain Holt of Brooklyn 99 (portrayed by Andre Braugher) do most of the talking for me...even though that ingenious character and this disappointing book have pretty much nothing in common.
...understand why I finished this book.
...remember why I chose to read this book.
...comprehend why this book was written.
So this book is supposed to be hilarious satire, according to a bunch of authors of whom I've never heard, which should have been my first warning sign. The author is an ex-pat teacher, which made me root for her, and maybe if I had any experience in China, I'd be nodding and laughing along, but I haven't and so I'm not.
All of the characters were shallow and flat and one-dimensional. The plot is scattered and completely unbelievable. I kept reading, apparently because I thought the plot would eventually come together. But it didn't.
...understand why I finished this book.
...remember why I chose to read this book.
...comprehend why this book was written.
So this book is supposed to be hilarious satire, according to a bunch of authors of whom I've never heard, which should have been my first warning sign. The author is an ex-pat teacher, which made me root for her, and maybe if I had any experience in China, I'd be nodding and laughing along, but I haven't and so I'm not.
All of the characters were shallow and flat and one-dimensional. The plot is scattered and completely unbelievable. I kept reading, apparently because I thought the plot would eventually come together. But it didn't.
July 21, 2024
This book is absurd, darkly comical, and borderline DNF-material. However, curiosity forbade me from putting it down so I read the entire book. The format changes within the story made it confusing at times and there were many characters to keep track of. The appeal of the book was the series of bizarre events and unique premises: a cranky goose being the inspiration for a snack company, a fat camp for children gone murderously awry, a befriended organic-hair-extension magnate, and a settlement for ex-millionaires. Sprinkle in some twenty-something attitude, unconventional problem solving, and lots of patriarchal bureaucracy and the result is a wild ride.
"In this life, there were so many decisions, and each came stuffed with so many consequences."
"Try explaining the concept of capitalism to a typical six-year-old, and odds are that if he's kind, he'll stomp on your foot and tell you to shut your stupid trap, or, if he's a rascal, he'll run off mid-speech and light a cherry bomb in your toilet to teach you a much-deserved lesson about rattling on. But whittle the same lecture down to a discussion of wants and needs, and suddenly you will find that same little brat very attentively on your page."
"Did I really wake up at seven a.m. to ride all the way out to this craptastic Communist-era building with no air-conditioning to meet with a government official who is probably just going to ask me for some sort of favor but who can't be bothered to show up on time to do so?"
"An effective leader doesn't lead from a podium, but from the ground below his or her people."
"Old Woman Wu once had a reputation as a very skilled baker, and in the old days of revolution and reeducation, she had generously baked for the ravenous village children all manner of pies and cakes spiced with creative famine-time ingredients including but not limited to grass, tree bark, pond algae, and sparrow's feet."
"If any of the parents knew where the children were, he painstakingly explained, they'd inevitably send care packages full of contraband or perhaps even attempt to tunnel under the ground using Democratic People's Republic of Korea-patented techniques to deliver to their children the snacks they so craved, and such parental meddling could completely derail all weight-loss efforts."
"And he saw her future too, which was obviously synonymous to him with her present and with her past: as a powerless little troublemaker who would never, ever be as good as a goose."
"In this life, there were so many decisions, and each came stuffed with so many consequences."
"Try explaining the concept of capitalism to a typical six-year-old, and odds are that if he's kind, he'll stomp on your foot and tell you to shut your stupid trap, or, if he's a rascal, he'll run off mid-speech and light a cherry bomb in your toilet to teach you a much-deserved lesson about rattling on. But whittle the same lecture down to a discussion of wants and needs, and suddenly you will find that same little brat very attentively on your page."
"Did I really wake up at seven a.m. to ride all the way out to this craptastic Communist-era building with no air-conditioning to meet with a government official who is probably just going to ask me for some sort of favor but who can't be bothered to show up on time to do so?"
"An effective leader doesn't lead from a podium, but from the ground below his or her people."
"Old Woman Wu once had a reputation as a very skilled baker, and in the old days of revolution and reeducation, she had generously baked for the ravenous village children all manner of pies and cakes spiced with creative famine-time ingredients including but not limited to grass, tree bark, pond algae, and sparrow's feet."
"If any of the parents knew where the children were, he painstakingly explained, they'd inevitably send care packages full of contraband or perhaps even attempt to tunnel under the ground using Democratic People's Republic of Korea-patented techniques to deliver to their children the snacks they so craved, and such parental meddling could completely derail all weight-loss efforts."
"And he saw her future too, which was obviously synonymous to him with her present and with her past: as a powerless little troublemaker who would never, ever be as good as a goose."
November 18, 2018
After I read the book, I had to go back to the original review of the book to see why I even picked it. This is supposedly written as satire to a Chinese author. It started as a Chinese heiress wanted to run a "fat camp" for kids-where they were all killed in a gruesome way and went downhill from there. It was also very hard for me to keep the main characters straight, especially when other things were happening to them throughout the book. Was not my cup of tea!
September 5, 2017
One of my favorites of the year.
December 2, 2018
I love how absurdist and weird this was!
May 3, 2025
Absolutely wild
January 28, 2016
For all the convolution and format changes, Year of the Goose connects back together fairly well. The flawed characters are interesting, if not necessarily likable (perhaps with the exception of Lulu). The first chapter of the book seemed to aim for bizarre and gory shock value, but it begins to even out when the second section begins. Unfortunately, much of that shock value means it's difficult to recap the story - this one is better read going in blind.
Read
January 1, 2016Absolutely outrageous, biting tongue in cheek satire. Sure, it's a dark, absurdist tale of tycoon economy, excessive consumerism and vanity, but I still didn't buy (har har, no pun intended) the ending, especially the suddenly happy reunion of goose and girl.
Oh well, it's a good antidote to talking politics and the economy with your family.
Oh well, it's a good antidote to talking politics and the economy with your family.
December 26, 2015
If there was a point to this book, I didn't get it. I felt like the storyline was all over the place. I also didn't like how the format kept changing. First, it was like a normal book. Then newspaper articles/headlines, then journal entries, etc. The whole thing felt very convoluted. It was one of those books where you reach the last page and just go "wtf."
March 27, 2016
Year of the Goose got a glowing review in the local newspaper so I was a bit disappointed when I read it. The humor can be described as over the top and grotesque. A much better book for reading about the excesses of today's newly filthy rich in Asia would be Crazy Rich Asians.
March 2, 2016
I couldn't even start the second story. I thought I was reading someone's nightmare. Maybe I missed something but it was not pleasant to read at all.
April 30, 2016
A comedy I didn't find funny. A look at China's new rich and the capitalistic culture that evolves. Rich that feel no purpose, rich kids that can't get it together no matter how hard they try.
November 8, 2016
Stupid book.
January 17, 2016
The goose bits were good.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews