newborns girls best friends 

First I read A Sheltered Woman (loved it) and got really excited! I loved it, the atmosphere, the story, the uniqueness of it and then I started with The Book of Goose (very basic good).
As a side note - about the author (I usually avoid comments on author since I care about the text, the book, not so much the author) but the author chose to write in English, not in her mother language Chinese even though she was already 23 when she moved to the US from Beijing with her husband in 1996, when she was 23, as a trainee immunologist. Her reasons for choosing English are intricate and personal as well as political and practical.
In the Book of Goose - I had a annoying feelin all time reading that I was reading a version of Ferrante ´s Napoli-series. The plot resembled too much to me the Ferrante ´s yet - the book waswell written but a bit too long and too "happy ending" to my liking. I much more prefferred the very short A Sheltered Woman, whchic took me to Yiyun Li in the first place. A Sheltered Woman was intriguing, interesting look to the life of a woman who spends all her life in the houselholds of others. She takes up a month long period of work in a family where there is a newborn baby. She helps the new mother with the baby, how to cope the life of a new mother. She had worked in 126 families before this one and after this one she will continue. This is her life, her chosen life and the writing was very delicate, yet powerful and the insights in both Auntie Mei ´s and the new mother ´s head gave me a lot to think about (on motherhood, on power in marriages, on womanhood).