Certainty: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Madeleine Thien (Author)
Key Phrases: thirtieth tree, Hong Kong, North Borneo, Leila Road (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Thien's debut novel draws its meager impetus from the tale of Matthew and Ani, two 10-year-olds in the village of Sandakan in Japanese-occupied Borneo during WWII, whose lyrical idylls buffer them from the horrors of war. Romance blossoms when they reunite eight years later, in 1953, but their past—Matthew's dead father collaborated with the Japanese—splits them up, sending the secretly pregnant Ani off to Jakarta and Matthew to Vancouver and a marriage (to Clara). Matthew and Ani's saga intertwines with the latter-day story of Matthew and Clara's daughter, Gail, a radio documentary maker, whose cozy but bland relationship is buffeted by an affair and who decides to find out about her father's mysterious past with Ani. Thien (Simple Recipes) uses this narrative as a peg for much elegiac meditation interspersed with muzzy reflections on fractals, code breaking and snowflake formation—her metaphor for the minute contingencies that shape human motivation. Her prose is poised but wan, and the patchwork story, despite jolts of tragic history, doesn't elicit much interest in her characters or their roads not taken. (Mar.)
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From Booklist
In her beautifully written debut novel, Thien spins a silky web of a story, a lovely and powerful multigenerational saga that explores a family's secrets stemming from events that occurred in a Malaysian village during the Japanese occupation of World War II. Death lurks behind much of the story and, in fact, the main character, Gail Lim, dies in the opening pages. The story begins there, though, and easily moves readers from the past to the present, as family members detail their own, sometimes very painful, recollections of events. These events include the death of Lim's grandfather at the hands of Japanese soldiers as well as the grandfather's possible involvement in wartime collaborations with the enemy, a lost love lurking in the jungles of that stricken Malaysian village, and the story of the eventual migration of the family, via Australia and Hong Kong, to Vancouver, British Columbia. There is a light, translucent quality to Thien's prose that casts a certain dreamlike quality on the tale, and yet the magnetic plot will keep the reader's interest through the end. Kathleen Hughes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (March 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316834998
• ISBN-13: 978-0316834995
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #803,541 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book with much pondering, April 21, 2007

By	Reader Views "www.readerviews.com" (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

Reviewed by Debra Gaynor for Reader Views (3/07)

It's been a year since Gail died. Ansel still remembers the warmth of her body next to his and cherishes the sound of her voice on tape. Gail had begun a documentary. It was important to her and it's unfinished. It is the story of her father Matthew Lim and an investigation of her grandfather's death. The story line begins in the future and travels to the past in a unique writing style.

Matthew's father had once own a rubber plantation in Malaysia but the Japanese army now controlled it. Before the war they had lived in a nice house. But the war had changed many things. The Japanese had taken over the school and now the students had to learn to sing Japanese songs. Matthew and his best friend, Ani, were only ten-years old, but they roamed the jungles. Years later Matthew and Ani meet again, and their love reawakens, but cannot overcome politics and the suspicions that Matthew's father assisted the Japanese. They quietly go their separate ways; Ani does not tell him that she is pregnant. Matthew goes on with his life moving to Vancouver. He marries Clara and cherishes their daughter Gail.

Each character in "Certainty" weaves in his, or her, own thread of the past. Each recounts their individual history in such a way that the story becomes a tapestry of many lives. The story flows smoothly. The characters jump off the pages and come to life. Gail is driven to find the truth. This is not a novel that I could pick up and read in one setting. The words must be pondered. The truth behind the words must be sought. Madeleine Thien is a talented writer and I believe we will be reading more of her books. I highly recommend this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Woven memories capture Vancouver and its links to the Asian diaspora, January 7, 2008

By	Steven Forth (Cambridge MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Vancouver, its rains, its peoples from so many places, carrying their histories, their losses, and their hopes is beautifully captured in this book. The book is set in Strathcona, the old residential district east of Chinatown that was at the center of a cultural renaisance in Vancouver in the 1980s and 1990s. The characters Gail and Ansel are in a way typical of the writers, artists, activists and their friends who have made the area a center for cultural nomads. Certainty is about the difficulty we all have, when being honest, of being certain of ourselves, our loves, our parents and our (un)shared pasts. It weaves together the stories of lovers (Gail and Ansel) with parents and children (Mathew and Ani) and the troubled history of Eastern Borneo and the city of Sandakan - a name that invokes the horror of its death camps under the Japanese, the brutality of its British commercial masters, and the cultural fusion of the Chinese (many Hakka), Japanese (Japanese have been living and trading in Sandakan since before the Edo period), Malays, Dutch and British. Madeleine Thien adds depth to the novel by informed discussions of sound (the protagonist Gail is producer of radio documentaries), image (her mother's husband and her half brother are photographers) and fractal math. These threads provide deep links back into the memories and relationships of the people.

This book helped me remember Vancouver, its cultures and people, and see its links back into the Asian diaspora. My thanks to the writer. I look forward to her next book.

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Confusing, Boring, and a Let Down, May 24, 2007

By	Mona L. Roth "Life Lover" (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book with much anticipation from the previous reviews I read. Boy, was I let down. It was an unfilling read, and very confusing. The time period jumps were not clear, and the book was just idle words without any meaning. If you asked me what the book was about, I would falter in giving you a clear description. There was no depth. Don't waste your money, more importantly don't waste your time.