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Madeleine Thien

Do Not Say We Have Nothing Hardcover – International Edition, May 31, 2016

by Madeleine Thien (Author)

745 ratings

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Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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Winner of the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and longlisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, this extraordinary novel tells the story of three musicians in China before, during and after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

   Madeleine Thien's new novel is breathtaking in scope and ambition even as it is hauntingly intimate. With the ease and skill of a master storyteller, Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations--those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution in the mid-twentieth century; and the children of the survivors, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square in 1989, in one of the most important political moments of the past century. With exquisite writing sharpened by a surprising vein of wit and sly humour, Thien has crafted unforgettable characters who are by turns flinty and headstrong, dreamy and tender, foolish and wise.
     At the centre of this epic tale, as capacious and mysterious as life itself, are enigmatic Sparrow, a genius composer who wishes desperately to create music yet can find truth only in silence; his mother and aunt, Big Mother Knife and Swirl, survivors with captivating singing voices and an unbreakable bond; Sparrow's ethereal cousin Zhuli, daughter of Swirl and storyteller Wen the Dreamer, who as a child witnesses the denunciation of her parents and as a young woman becomes the target of denunciations herself; and headstrong, talented Kai, best friend of Sparrow and Zhuli, and a determinedly successful musician who is a virtuoso at masking his true self until the day he can hide no longer. Here, too, is Kai's daughter, the ever-questioning mathematician Marie, who pieces together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking a fragile meaning in the layers of their collective story.
     With maturity and sophistication, humour and beauty, a huge heart and impressive understanding, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once beautifully intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of daily life inside China, yet transcendent in its universality.

Print length

480 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Knopf Canada
Publication date

May 31, 2016
Dimensions

6.34 x 1.5 x 9.24 inches
ISBN-10

0345810422
ISBN-13

978-0345810427
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Editorial Reviews

Review

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CANADIAN AUTHORS ASSOCIATION AWARD FOR FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION

“Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing is an elegant, nuanced and perfectly realized novel that, fugue-like, presents the lives of individuals, collectives, and generations caught in the complexities of history. Tracing the intertwined lives of two families, moving from Revolutionary China to Canada, this ambitious work explores the persistence of past and the power of art, raising meaningful questions for our times.” —Governor General’s Award jury citation

“Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien entranced the jurors with its detailed, layered, complex drama of classical musicians and their loved ones trying to survive two monstrous insults to their humanity: Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in mid-twentieth century China and the Tiananmen Square massacre of protestors in Beijing in 1989. Do Not Say We Have Nothing addresses some of the timeless questions of literature: who do we love, and how do the love of art, of others and ourselves sustain us individually and collectively in the face of genocide? A beautiful homage to music and to the human spirit, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is both sad and uplifting in its dramatization of human loss and resilience in China and in Canada.” —Scotiabank Giller Prize jury citation

“A beautiful, sorrowful work. The book impresses in many senses. . . . Seductive . . . The larger saga unfurls like silk—and proves similarly resistant to knots, a testament to Ms. Thien’s storytelling skills. . . . Virtuoso.” —The New York Times

“Thien is a novelist through and through.” —The Globe and Mail

“With compassion and meticulous precision, Madeleine Thien explores ordinary lives shaped by extraordinary political events. Like a beautiful and complex piece of music, the narration unfolds in layers, returning again and again to the central themes of family, memory and loss. Thien is a serious and gifted writer.” —Ma Jian, author of Beijing Coma

“The tragedy and absurdity of modern China never felt so alive as in Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Thien writes of an extended family of musical prodigies whose loves and ambitions are thwarted at every turn. The meticulous research that went into this novel about real-life events makes it so utterly believable that your heart aches. Thien’s writing is as lyrical as works of Bach and Shostakovich that inspire her musician characters, but her tour de force is the last movement of this symphonic novel in which the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square unfolds at a thrilling, fortissimo pace.” —Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy

“This is a resplendent, epic masterpiece of a novel that brings to light a dark period of Chinese history through wit, humour and nuanced storytelling. The characters linger long after the last page.” —Alice Pung, author of Unpolished Gem

“Intelligent, powerful and moving. This is Madeleine Thien’s magnum opus.” —Tan Twan Eng, author of The Garden of Evening Mists

“Imagination, Nabokov says, is a form of memory. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a perfect example of how a writer’s imagination keeps alive the memory of a country’s and its people’s past when the country itself tries to erase the history. With insight and compassion, Madeleine Thien presents a compelling tale of China of twentieth century.” —Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants

“[S]killfully and elliptically told. . . . A colourful cast of characters comes to life. . . . Do Not Say We Have Nothing . . . show[s] Thien at the height of her abilities. . . . With unflinching clarity, Thien examines the strange, frightening psychology of mass violence in this period and how countless lives were lost as a result. It falls to music, art and literature to salvage fleeting moments of beauty from the ruins of history, the lives of the dead.” —National Post

“It’s rare to encounter a new literary novel with the sweep and scope of Do Not Say We Have Nothing. It’s no exaggeration to say the reading experience is reminiscent of some of the great Russians: Dostoevsky, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn. . . . There’s a mastery of storytelling here and the book is engaging on every page.” —The Vancouver Sun

“[A] gorgeous intergenerational saga. . . . Should any doubt remain, Do Not Say We Have Nothing will cement Madeleine Thien as one of Canada’s most talented novelists. . . . [T]horoughly researched but without the burden of trivia, both riveting and lyrical.” —The Globe and Mail

“To say Thien’s characters come to life is an approximation: they are at once so whole and so open that a reader can step into the book seamlessly, watching, shifting as the pages turn. The affinity reaches so deeply that we celebrate their hopes and mourn their losses; a death leaves me crying in my kitchen. . . . [T]hien’s descriptions manage to have at once the lightness of the perfect, obvious observation, and the heft of time and place. . . . My copy is dog-eared through with lines that ring and hold. . . . The novel floats by like a dream of words, a piece of the story, in solidarity with its dreamers.” —Montreal Review of Books

“Madeleine Thien . . . strives mightily to decant the tragedy of revolutionary-cum-communist China into a literary epic. . . . That such a diffuse tale should prove shattering serves as testament to Thien’s formidable storytelling skills. The vortex of ideological terror that sweeps up the characters, the harrowing experiences a cruel and pitiless regime foists upon them, and even the potent yet witty prose conveying all this drama sear themselves into your consciousness. . . . Do Not Say We Have Nothing . . . will enthrall just about any reader.” —Toronto Star

“[T]hien delivers in spades. She has clearly done years of historical research into the turbulent timelines of twentieth-century China. . . . Thien’s plots are always complicated, but the challenges of untangling them is part of the pleasure. . . . [S]he is creating a memorial for the millions of lives lost, disappeared, shriveled or wasted during not just the years of Mao’s reign but back to the famine of 1910 and forward to the dashed hopes of Tiananmen in 1989. That is some accomplishment.” —Literary Review of Canada

“[M]adeleine Thien’s sensitive, effective exploration of how the Cultural Revolution still reverberates in the lives of those who experienced it, as well as their descendants. . . . [T]hien’s polished prose immerses the reader into the lives of classically trained musicians in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. . . . [A] story of love and hope. . . . Thien writes with empathy, even for those who cannot forgive themselves.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a serious accomplishment. . . . [A] sprawling work, composed of fragmented narratives, and crammed with indelible characters, horrific events and compelling ideas. . . . [T]hien manages to keep her material firmly in control. . . . This book calls to mind Dai Sijie’s magical Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress in the way literature and music help characters endure exile and re-education. . . . The sound of music is this novel’s most powerful force.” —Maclean’s

“Bold, beautiful and profoundly affecting, Do Not Say We Have Nothing celebrates the indestructibility of the individual, and both declares and illustrates the transcendent power of art. An exceptional novel.” —James Scudamore, author of The Amnesia Clinic and Heliopolis

“Writing about history in dazzlingly original and lyrical fictional form has been the stock-in-trade of the forty-one-year-old Vancouver-born Thien, and has made her one of Canada’s most critically acclaimed writers. . . . Revolving around two families of musicians living through the often horrifying ructions of twentieth-century China, from the Cultural Revolution to the iconic events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square, the book is both a salutary reminder of Thien’s many strengths and a stunning next-level statement.” —The Gazette

“Elegiac and complex. . . . The novel is a gripping page-turner, an instant history of China in the twentieth century.” —The Sun Times

About the Author

Madeleine Thien is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes, which was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, a Kiriyama Pacific Prize Notable Book, and won the BC Book Prize for Fiction; the novel Certainty, which won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award; and the novel Dogs at the Perimeter, which was shortlisted for Berlin’s 2014 International Literature Award and won the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Liberaturpreis. Her novels and stories have been translated into twenty-five languages, and her essays have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, the Financial Times, Five Dials, Brick and Al Jazeera. Her story “The Wedding Cake” was shortlisted for the prestigious 2015 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. The daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada, she lives in Montreal.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On the 16th of December, 1990, Ma came home in a taxi with a new daughter who wore no coat, only a thick scarf, a woollen sweater, blue jeans and canvas shoes. I had never met a Chinese girl before, that is, one who, like my father, came from real mainland China. A pair of grey mittens dangled from a string around her neck and swayed in nervous rhythm against her legs. The fringed ends of her blue scarf fell one in front and one behind, like a scholar. The rain was falling hard, and she walked with her head down, holding a medium-sized suitcase that appeared to be empty. She was pale and her hair had the gleam of the sea.
   Casually I opened the door and widened my eyes as if I was not expecting visitors.
   "Girl," Ma said. "Take the suitcase. Hurry up."
   Ai-ming stepped inside and paused on the edge of the doormat. When I reached for the suitcase, my hand accidentally touched hers, but she didn’t draw back. Instead, her other hand reached out and lightly covered mine. She gazed right at me, with such openness and curiosity that, out of shyness, I closed my eyes.
   "Ai-ming," Ma was saying. "Let me introduce you. This is my Girl."
   I pulled away and opened my eyes again.
   Ma, taking off her coat, glanced first at me and then at the room. The brown sofa with its three camel-coloured stripes had seen better days, but I had spruced it up with all the flowery pillows and stuffed animals from my bed. I had also turned on the television in order to give this room the appearance of liveliness. Ma nodded vigorously at me. "Girl, greet your aunt."
   "Really, it’s okay if you call me Ai-ming. Please. I really, mmm, prefer it."
   To placate them both, I said, "Hello."
   Just as I suspected, the suitcase was very light. With my free hand, I moved to take Ai-ming’s coat, remembering too late she didn’t have one. My arm wavered in the air like a question mark. She reached out, grasped my hand and firmly shook it.
   She had a question in her eyes. Her hair, pinned back on one side, fell loosely on the other, so that she seemed forever in profile, about to turn towards me. Without letting go of my hand, she manoeuvred her shoes noiselessly off her feet, first one then the other. Pinpoints of rain glimmered on her scarf. Our lives had contracted to such a degree that I could not remember the last time a stranger had entered our home; Ai-ming’s presence made everything unfamiliar, as if the walls were crowding a few inches nearer to see her. The previous night, we had, at last, tidied Ba’s papers and notebooks, putting them into boxes and stacking the boxes under the kitchen table. Now I found the table’s surface deceitfully bare. I freed my hand, saying I would put the suitcase in her bedroom.
   Ma showed her around the apartment. I retreated to the sofa and pretended to watch the Weather Channel, which predicted rain for the rest of the week, the rest of 1990, the rest of the century, and even the remainder of all time. Their two voices ran one after the other like cable cars, interrupted now and then by silence. The intensity in the apartment crept inside me, and I had the sensation that the floor was made of paper, that there were words written everywhere I couldn’t read, and one unthinking gesture could crumple this whole place down.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf Canada; Canadian First edition (May 31, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 480 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345810422
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345810427
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.49 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.34 x 1.5 x 9.24 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,037,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,895 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #117,092 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Madeleine Thien is the author of two books of fiction, Simple Recipes, a collection of stories, and Certainty, a novel. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Granta, The Walrus, Five Dials, Brick, and the Asia Literary Review, and her work has been translated into more than sixteen language. In 2010, she received the Ovid Festival Prize, awarded each year to an international writer of promise. She lives in Montreal.

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Jessica

A beautifully written historical fiction piece that was too complex at times.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 16, 2021

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“Do Not Say We Have Nothing” was chosen as a summer read for my book club and I am so glad I gave it a read!

My favorite part about the novel is how the past and present are intertwined. Thien does a fantastic job revealing events to the reader that are chronologically out of order. To link the past to the present, Thien introduces a multitude of characters and writes from each of their perspectives. Many of these characters end up interacting with one another, creating interrelation.

I also enjoyed the novel’s historical elements and look into Chinese culture. One of the timelines within “Do Not Say We Have Nothing” takes place during the Cultural Revolution in China. I did not know much about this sociopolitical movement prior to reading Thien’s work. Throughout my time spent with the text, I learned much about Zedong’s cruelty and the millions of lives that were lost. With each chapter I read, I did more and more research and I appreciate the novel for pushing me to do so. In addition to learning more about historical events such as the Cultural Revolution, I was exposed to Chinese culture. Thien introduces to the reader to Chinese characters in the very first chapter. It was fascinating to learn how the meaning of certain characters change when they are combined with others.

Though there were many parts of this novel I enjoyed, it took me a while to get into it. At times, the book put me into a reading slump. I think one of the reasons I had a hard time getting into this book can be attributed to the fact that there were too many characters and I didn’t connect with them. Their stories felt secondary to some of the musical and historical elements which were overwhelming in and of themselves. Music is tied to many of the characters and many composers and pieces were mentioned that I was not familiar with. Because so many references were made, I eventually gave up doing research because I just wanted to finish the story.

That being said, I am grateful to have been introduced to Thien’s work! Her writing is both spectacular and complex.

3 people found this helpful

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CD in Maine

A lot of effort by author and reader alike, but not memorable

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 29, 2017

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There seems to be a trend in modern fiction for authors to set stories in historically significant periods of conflict or upheaval as a means to add gravity to the work. When well executed, this device can enhance the impact of a strong novel. However, too often the placement of an unremarkable or unlikely story in a dramatic setting only highlights the weakness of the story. Do Not Say We Have Nothing falls in the latter category.

Another modern trend is for stories to occur over periods of decades or more, across generations, across continents and so on. The idea, it seems, is to add weight or grandeur by making the story “epic”. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is also this kind of novel.

Because this novel employs both of these now common techniques, it is not a novel in which nothing happens. In fact many things happen. People appear and disappear. They get arrested and they escape. They move around the world and return. They fall in love and they die. There are tragedies, many tragedies. All about them is history, from the cultural revolution to Tiananmen Square. And, as is also frequently the case these days, there is some element of mysticism or surrealism that acts as yet another device to add moral, spiritual, or intellectual heft to the novel. Indeed, in this swirl of events, sometimes the reader can become confused, which may be intentional.

Yet despite all of these supports and techniques, this novel disappointed me. Ultimately, this book, which wanted to be so weighty, didn’t cause me to think much differently about anything. The characters never seemed particularly real or likely. Stripped away of the book’s devices, the themes didn’t seem particularly original. I was acutely aware of the author at almost all times. Her effort was palpable. Her prose was frequently lyrical but rarely meaningful. She seemed like a competent author attempting to write like she thinks a great author writes, and not quite succeeding.

Finally, the book is long, very long. Length is not necessarily a flaw, but when length doesn’t make the book better, it becomes merely an annoyance. Second, the role of music in the novel is massively overdone. A number of important characters are musicians or composers or both. They talk and think about music constantly and the author continually challenges herself to come up with new ways to describe the sound of Beethoven or Prokofiev or Shostakovich. Mostly these descriptions are ineffective, in part because most readers will not be familiar with many of the pieces.

Madeleine Thein gets high marks for effort, but from a literary perspective she hasn’t accomplished anything that is really noteworthy, in my opinion. I know the prize committees love these kinds of books, and this has all the typical elements of today’s prize-winning novels. This is a very serious book that almost collapses under the weight of its seriousness. For me it was not worth the substantial investment of time.

52 people found this helpful

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Book Bonkers

Say We Have Something?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 3, 2017

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The complex narrative layers that thread their way with cryptic unpredictability in this novel through Mao's Cultural Revolution to the Tiananmen Square massacre carry with them the stories of many sad, unfulfilled lives. Sparrow's comment late on in the text that "I've been searching for myself, but I didn't expect to find so many selves of mine" bears testament to that sadness in one sense, whilst recognising the way Mao Zedong's decade- long madness in the 1960's "removed the wholeness of those left behind, and the truth they once knew vanished, unrecorded, unreal, like sound dissipating." The simile is apt, as Thien uses it to gauge the texture of history through cyclical periods of revolutionary brutality, but it is also important as a pointer to the musical underpinning that scores and streams its way through the various storylines. Glenn Gould's recordings of Bach's 'Goldberg Variations' reprise constantly, with Beethoven, Fauré and Prokofiev counterpointing the sick, destructive minds of the Gang of Four and Madame Mao. People die, people grieve and move on, each new self more attenuated than the last. The relationship between Kai and Sparrow is bravely and tenderly conceived and represents the most moving of all the novel's relationships, the more so after Kai's suicide following Sparrow's murder in the 1989 atrocity. The non-linear chronology of the narrative creates a bleakness to every journey and a sense, in the end, of weariness in the reader, which must be the worst indictment of all of the fatuous malevolence of Mao's madness. Under his rule, we are told, 36 million people died.

12 people found this helpful

Adnan Soysal

awkward sentences

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 8, 2021

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Do not waste your time unless your are willing to read 460 pages of unenjoyable, unclear sentences.
You know there is a group of novelists who write awkward sentences , difficult to follow, and connect. Madeleine Thien is one of them.
I sometimes think such sentences are product of a conscious effort.
This amount of amount of annoyance and disengagement of the reader can not be achieved otherwise.

Other annoying feature of the novel is it is just not clear who is the narrator.
And you have no other choice than keep referring to family tree Wikipedia page to get who is who in the novel.

You may begin with big excitement of going thorough a story in China from cultural revolution to Tiananmen Square.
But, that mission is impossible.

One person found this helpful

Izzielickedabee

Slow to start but ultimately gripping, moving historical novel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 24, 2018

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Brilliantly realised, this blends the contemporary with the historical to create a family saga which examines the impact and aftermath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. I thought this was well-researched, intelligent, moving but not sentimental, dramatic without lapsing into melodrama. I found that the opening sections required patience and, for me, the story really took off when the central character Marie visits Hong Kong and the parallel narrative set in China’s past moves to the beginnings of the Cultural Revolution. As well as revisiting history and its impact on individual lives, the narrative raises issues that relate to China now, as well as the future of Hong Kong. I'd previously read non-fiction accounts of this period of Chinese history, notably Frank Dikotter’s work, and I found that Thien’s take on history greatly enhanced my understanding of the human cost of Mao’s policies. Thien’s main characters are musicians and the novel contains detailed references to Glenn Gould’s work, on the recommendation of another reader, I listened to Gould alongside reading the novel which enhanced my reading experience.

4 people found this helpful

Laura

from the Great Leap Forward to Tiananmen Square

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 8, 2016

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The light touch of this novel allows it to approach the horrors of twentieth-century Chinese history, from the Great Leap Forward to Tiananmen Square, with a frankness that is at times breathtaking. It gets as close to tragedy as you could imagine without ever becoming prurient and without editorializing. Borrowing some musical structure from the Goldberg Variations composition that fascinates several of the major characters, it circles and doubles back and forward in time to elaborate on themes of loyalty, courage, self-expression, and sacrifice as they play out across four generations of two families, complete with a pair of star-crossed lovers so subtly drawn they seem always to be slipping away. Sometimes a work easier to admire than to enjoy, and occasionally bogged down in the sheer number of characters and volume of biographical detail, especially for the older generations, it's at its most compelling when detailing the doomed Cultural Revolution days of the three conservatory musicians Sparrow, Jiang Kai, and Zhuli.

Eva

Too much struggle

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 12, 2018

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It was a love and hate affair with this book. I loved the characters, pretty much all of them - somehow the author makes each character alive and credible. The horrors of the cultural revolution era in China made me very sad. It’s written with an amazing amount of detail. All the conversations, word for word, it was exhausting to read. I understand it was important to hear everything that people said - it was too much for me, though. The story is very well weaves, with a decent amount of suspense. It took me only 100 pages or so to het into who is who in this labyrinth of the people living in the past and present, as if Chinese mythology. I wouldn’t pick this book if not for the book club and I did not enjoy voice - but I have to say that the novel is very skilfully written.

3 people found this helpful

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