Review: Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien

On Tuesday, the Man Booker Prize Shortlist was announced. For those of you not in the know, the Man Booker is a prize given for what the judging panel deems to be the best novel written in English and published in the UK each year. For many including myself, the Booker is the Prize to watch, the AFL Grand Final for nerds.

This year's shortlist consists of:
Paul Beatty's The Sellout
Deborah Levy's Hot Milk
Graeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody Project
Otessa Moshfegh's Eileen
David Szalay's All That Man Is
Madeline Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing

The Booker somewhat controversially opened the prize up to all english speaking countries in 2015 (previously only awarding the prize to those in the Commonwealth), and this years longlist contained notably more american authors than the one that preceded it.

For the next six weeks I'm going to be looking at each of the Man Booker Shortlist picks, with occasional help from some of your other favourite Smitteners, talking about why these might have made the shortlist and who might take out the final prize. I am excited and a little scared and I hope you all enjoy the journey.

Now onto my first review.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, by Madeline Thien, has somewhat cynically been described by many as the classic Man Booker pick, for its complex, political, intergenerational narrative.

The novel begins in the voice of our youngest character, Marie:

"In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life."

From here, Thien takes us back to the start of the Chinese Communist Revolution, through the Cultural Revolution and up to the Tiananmen Square Riots.

I think from the distance of the West, it is easy to lose the human impact of international tragedies, particularly when they star people of colour. I am one of few people I know who was presented a unit on modern Chinese History in high school, and even this had gaping holes in it. If you do not already know a little about the events Thien is describing you will not be completely lost, however you will probably find yourself compelled to seek further reading once you've put the book down.

Through Thien's characters, the widespread devastating personal impact of these events is impossible to miss. There is an almost folktale like character to the events of the distant past that is slowly stripped away as we are brought through the horrors that her characters sustain.

Thien explores characters that are often not wholly good or evil, but shaped by circumstance. She carefully examines those who are influenced into acts of violence and betrayal, treating them with care but without total forgiveness. Her characters cannot be completely redeemed from what their political context has condemned them to.

Music is heavily weaved through one generation of the families in particular. Studying classical music, I am often wary of novels that invest parts of their narratives in music. To me, it can often feel like pretentious name-dropping at best and often adds little to the story. To get a bit less literary, it sometimes feels like the scene in Pitch Perfect where Beca acts like David Guetta is some underground, unappreciated genius.

To me, Thien was not too heavy handed. The pieces referenced were not the absolute standards and were described in terms of the emotions they induced rather than just as name-drops to remind the reader that the characters enjoyed music. Knowing the works was a bonus but not necessary to understand what she was trying to evoke in mentioning them. I will say some of these references went over even my head, as, as a self-centred violinist, I am less familiar with piano works that were often discussed.

The books one weakness was something common to many works coving such a large time period and cast. Although for the most part, Thien's characters felt remarkably well realised, Marie, whose voice starts and ends the book, was not as strong as I would have liked. We see small snippets that are supposed to provide character—that she studies maths for instance—however we never truly get to understand her in the way we do her predecessors. When we start to delve well and truly into the past I was not quite content to leave the present, and whilst details of the dual narratives slowly serve to illuminate one another, I never felt like I was quite done witnessing Marie's own experiences.

I think it's also worth mentioning that Thien's prose is impeccable. Although she moves between different styles of story telling, no voice felt less powerful than any other and the choices made in differentiating them did not feel arbitrary. She pushes the narrative forward with a compelling lucidity that makes the book difficult to put down, no mean feat for such a complex work.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a powerful book on an important topic, however it is not for this reason along that I believe it has been shortlisted for the Booker. Weeks after reading it, I still feel profoundly affected by Thien's writing and characters in a way that is rare. Although I am a little disappointed Marie's character wasn't explored more deeply, I would still not be at all upset if this book ended up taking home the top prize.

Written by Adalya Hussein

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.