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    Do Not Say We Have Nothing
    Do Not Say We Have Nothing
    Do Not Say We Have Nothing
    Audiobook20 hours

    Do Not Say We Have Nothing

    Written by Madeleine Thien

    Narrated by Angela Lin

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Winner of the Giller Prize and Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. "A vivid, magisterial novel that reaches back to China's civil war and up to the present day" -The Guardian "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. I was ten years old." Master storyteller Madeleine 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 and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story. Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming's father, the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China's political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences. With maturity and sophistication, humor and beauty, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of life inside China yet transcendent in its universality.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 11, 2016
    ISBN9781501948015
    Do Not Say We Have Nothing

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    Reviews for Do Not Say We Have Nothing

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      4.0 stars
      Started off slow, but I really got in to it. I have recently been listening to a lot of classical music, and this tied right in to that. Well written and thought provoking. Gave me a much better understanding of China in this time period.
    • 3/5
      This is an interesting intermingle of stories, particularly in chasing down a family history, although I bogged down pretty hard in the middle. I think trimming a good 100 pages would have moved the narrative along.
    • 2/5
      One of those books that is on a powerful subject that interests me but is written in a way I find difficult to become involved.
    • 3/5
      This is the perfect book to simultaneously read both paper and audio editions. Chinese characters to see and Chinese pronunciation to hear. I did that with CDs through disc 3 of 17. If I had been able to download an audible file on my phone I’d have continued reading this way but the CDs slowed me down too much. When using them I had to read only when I was home and not too early or too late in the days. I read most of the book with only the hardcover. I think I might have liked the book better if I’d been able to read both editions throughout.This is an incredibly ambitious novel. For me in some ways that worked and in some ways it didn’t.I really enjoyed certain aspects of this book. I learned a lot of Chinese history. I loved how music as a subject was included. I loved how the three musicians related to their life experiences via music. I loved the “big picture” of how people were affected by events. I appreciated the family tree in the front of the book. I liked when in addition to the English text other things were included such as Chinese characters, photos, and more. I thought much of the story was beautifully written.Reading this was a slog for me though. It felt way too easy to put it down and read other books and do other things. It wasn’t the back and forth timelines & character groups as I often think that works well in multigenerational tales. I just didn’t connect with the people as individuals as much as I would have expected. When I read about happenings I cared greatly about the People but not THAT much about the people, the characters in the book. I felt some sort of distance with them. I also didn’t like how one thing seemed important and then absent and then not resolved. I sometimes like open endings and I had my opinion of what happened with this one, but somehow the story still felt incomplete to me, or at least unsatisfying.3-1/2 stars
    • 5/5
      It is rare that this happens so pay attention: I am speechless.

      There is nothing I can say.

      This is an absolute stunning work of beauty.

      I sobbed for the last 50 pages, and most of the time, I wasn't quite sure why.

      This book broke me, and somehow managed to put me back together.

      Utterly broken, yet still full of hope.

      And that is the story of Do Not Say We Have Nothing.
    • 4/5
      A very engrossing read. May be a little over written but the prose is very rich. The book is filled with ideas that I could mull over for weeks.
    • 5/5
      The writing is beautiful, dreamy, and poetic, which is a treat. The subject matter is not new to me, but this is the best telling of the cultural revolution I have read so far.
    • 5/5
      This book deserves more than five stars because it is in a league of its own. Thien writes with the insight and keen, careful observation of a fly on the wall of history. And yet, her words carry such breadth and depth and significance, it's as though she were floating high above her characters and watching the story unfold in the context of the universe. Historical fiction, generational saga—none of the standard depictions do justice to this masterful piece of creative beauty. The words practically sing and each component of this book has a life of its own. My thoughts are all jumbled here because I am so deeply impressed by this work, I don't even know how to begin reviewing it.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to love this book so much. There's no question that Madeleine Thien has written a brilliant novel, but I'm not connecting with the style of writing here.
    • 4/5
      Not an easy book to read - I never felt compelled to keep reading, and I preferred the Vancouver story to the China story. However, it is a well-written book and addresses a time and place in history I knew little about, so I appreciate the opportunity to be educated on the oppression by Mao and others. What could the peole do?? There isn't a sense of hopelessness in the characters, though, and it is interesting to see how each one deals with the situation differently. Definitely worth discussion in a book club or classroom!
    • 3/5
      I found this more informative than moving - which probably says more about gaps in my knowledge than anything else. That said, the wider horrors of Mao's regime overshadowed the characters, and the Tiananmen denoument was oddly flat.
    • 5/5
      Much like when I read The Historian, I was unable to decide if what I was reading was fiction or nonfiction. (Of course, there were no vampires in this book so maybe this isn't the best comparison except for the way they both made me feel.) I couldn't put down Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien despite how much I sometimes wanted to in order to spare myself further heartbreak. This is the story of those who lived through China's Cultural Revolution and their successors a world away in Canada...at least a tiny little slice. Our main characters rotate between Sparrow, Kai, and Zhuli who lived during Mao Zedong's reign of terror, Ai-Ming who took part in the demonstrations of Tiananmen Square, and Marie who wants to piece everything together in present day Canada. This is also about music and its power to lift the soul or to mire it in secrets. A lot of sensitive topics are touched on in this book including but not limited to torture, public humiliation, and sexual assault. This is not just a work of historical fiction but also a mystery about people, events, and a book that keeps resurfacing. Intricately woven with details which seem to make the story come to life in vivid color right before your eyes this book is one that I think everyone should experience. This is the hallmark of excellent historical fiction. 10/10
    • 4/5
      The 2016 ScotiaBank Giller prizewinner is a gem of a book. 'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' takes the reader from modern day Vancouver, back to China of the 1960's through the Cultural Revolution and to the uprising at Tianamen Square. This is not always an easy book to read. Sometimes I found the timelines confusing and sometimes I had to struggle to work out who was who. However, the writing is beautiful. Every day when I picked the book up, I had to remind myself of where I was in the narrative, but whenever I put the book down my thought was, 'This is such a good book!'. The section on the Tianamen Square uprising, in particular, was so vividly engrossing and I could imagine myself on the sidelines in the students' struggle. I have put this book aside to read again - it just won't let me go.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed and got totally caught up in this multi-generational story of life in China during the cultural revolution and the Tianamen Square uprising. The book made me think about identity. Most of the characters are musicians, where their work and their creativity are one and the same. And what if your music -- your very sense of yourself -- is not allowed? Or if you are told you will have a different job? It makes me appreciate the accomplishments of individual people in such a regime. The book also made me think about freedom. When so much of your life -- your work, where you live, where your spouse lives -- is controlled, it must be hard for those who leave such a regime (say, by emigrating) to adjust to the kind of freedom we enjoy in Canada. The very lack of oppression here can be a burden to some extent -- at least for a while.Great writing, strong characters....well worth reading.
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this book. The Chinese Cultural Revolution interests me. The presentation of the many characters in various settings was too confusing. The lack of organization made reading it too difficult, and I gave up.
    • 3/5
      I can't say I liked this book although it is beautifully written. I found it very hard to follow and to establish which character belonged to which Chinese revolution. A list of characters at the beginning would have been helpful.The story is about three generations of a family in China which lives through several revolutions to keep the Communist Party in power, even though its citizens endure tremendous suffering for very banal misdemeanours.The student demonstrations which led to the crackdowns at Tianamen Square in 1989 is the most prominent revolt and one almost feels that the Party might give in to student demands. However, it merely culminates in the deaths of thousands of people, including the main character Sparrow.The theme of music, particularly Beethoven is a character on its own and a thread that interconnects several story lines. Another theme of recording the past for the future alerts current generations to past revolutions and their ineptitude in designing change.This is a sad story but one of hope as people survived torture and exile for political purposes and yet saw hope in their children's futures.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book. The topic of China and it's various revolutions was very interesting but confusing. It was also somewhat confusing. There is a really great book in this book.
    • 5/5
      It took me two tries to get through this book. The first time I thought it was just too sad to finish, but th characters stayed in my mind and I’m glad I gave it another go. Following a Chinese family through the Cultural Revolution and the Tienanmen Square massacre evolves very powerful images of the strength of an ordinary family. It well deserves its place on the Booker Prize shortlist.
    • 5/5
      Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien is a multi-generational novel about the Chinese Cultural Revolution and afterwards that puts all other multi-generational novels to shame. It's really good, combining wonderful and vibrant character studies with excellent writing and story structure. Thien deserves all the praise she's received for this book. Marie is a girl living Vancouver, Canada, with her mother, her father having returned to China and committed suicide, when they are joined by Ai-ming, a college student fleeing China in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square. She leaves them to go to the US in hopes of being granted asylum and Marie never sees her again. In adulthood, Marie undertakes a search for Ai-ming, who may have returned to China. As her search goes on, the story is told of how Ai-ming and Marie's family were connected and goes further back to the story of Ai-ming's parents and grandparents, as they survive WWII, Mao's reign as dictator and on into the turmoil of Tiananmen Square. It's a lot of history, and a quantity of characters, but Thien juggles the storylines adeptly and makes each character from Big Mother Knife to Marie herself, vivid and complex. This is a novel well worth reading. Also, it's a page-turner.
    • 4/5
      A fantastic book about Chinese oppression during the 20th century, in China and beyond. Really fascinating and not heard before expose of the consequences of Tianneman Square
    • 5/5
      This is a book that I found very diffiuclt to read, but, at the same time, I couldn't put it down. I knew that horrible things were going to keep coming, and there would be no happy ending, but still I read, and read, and read. This book covers a time form the 1950's until 2006, but still we knew that the culmination was going to be in Beijing in 1989 at Tiananmmen Square. All those of a certain age remember the atrocities of Tiananmen Square and the innocent people that lost their lives during that demonstration, but to actually live through all the atrocities that led up to it, was an eye opener for me. And that is what Madeleine Thien has done with this Giller Prize winning book. She has picked up her readers and put them into the era - the Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong as he brought Communisim to China. We are forced to suffer as all the families suffered that lost family members either to repatriation or to death, and how they had to hide all their emotions, and praise Mao's efforts to build a "new" China during the Cultural Revolution. Some people have a hard shell and can go through this kind of traumatic event like this without showing their emotion, but others are like Sparrow. Everything is submersed until it erupts into widespread revolt twenty years later. The book works in positive and negative chapters wihch is a huge difference from most books, but the thread of the music and the unfinished story from the many-copied versions of the Book of Records that also threads thorought this book tie everything together - both the horrific and the heartwarming. The classical music and the Book of Records provide a dream-ike atmosphere to the story of Sparrow, Mother-Knife, Ai-Ming and Marie (back in Canada). This is a tour de force of a novel; that covers two continents, but only one indomitable familyl, And as difficult as it was to read, I would not have missed this story for the world. Madeleine Thien has created a masterpiece here, and everyone should read it. Well done!
    • 4/5
      Set largely in China, readers become acquainted with the families of Sparrow and Kai at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s, pulling the narrative forward from the Communist Revolution to the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square and even providing updates after that event. The book shows a relationship between mathematics and music. As a genealogist, I was particularly drawn to the mentions of the "Book of Records." As a musician, I was drawn to the rest of the story. I enjoyed the frequent mentions of one of my favorite Russian composers, Shostakovich. The writing was strong. A more in-depth knowledge of twentieth century Chinese history would make the work more enjoyable than it already was. The book was well-deserving of its shortlisting for the Man Booker Prize.
    • 3/5
      Any hugely ambitious work will take risks either in its form or content or both. In Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien follows a collection of friends and relations across the social upheavals that have swept through communist China from its inception. These narratives are framed by the story of the last heir, a woman living in Canada searching for answers concerning the suicide of her father when she was a child. As she encounters individuals connected to his past in China, the story jumps to their stories so that a richly interwoven intergenerational tapestry results. Running across these narrative is a story about a book — The Book of Records — which may or may not contain this history in its changing, coded, and much-copied text. And in everything there is music since most of these characters are musicians or composers whose truth lies in their connection to and reinterpretation of the music that has preceded them. So, an ambitious project. And it largely succeeds.That it is not entirely satisfying is due, I think, to attempting too much, perhaps. Despite the length of the novel, you might be thinking it should have been twice as long again in order to adequately do justice to its many storylines, motifs, and themes. Or perhaps it could have used a bit of pruning. Sometimes less is actually more. But that sounds churlish, which is unintended. For I do think Madeleine Thien is a fine writer.In particular, I thought she handled the tension and aggression in the sections on the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre very well. And I enjoyed her treatment of music. I could have stood even more.So, I’m a bit on the fence here. I think you’ll have to make up your own mind.
    • 4/5
      Madeleine Thien's multi-prize-winning novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a sweeping journey through several decades of eventful and tragic Chinese history. The complex story, which weaves together various narrative threads, begins in Canada in 1989, with young Marie learning that her father, 39 years old and a concert pianist, has killed himself while living in Hong Kong. 1989 is of course a watershed year in Chinese history and politics because of the uprisings and protests that were tolerated for months before being brutally suppressed by the government, with the loss of hundreds and perhaps thousands of lives. The next year, in December 1990, 19-year-old Ai-ming, a relative fleeing the clampdown, arrives in Canada to live with Marie and her mother. Marie and Ai-ming form a close bond, but Ai-ming subsequently leaves Canada for the US; Marie loses touch with her and spends the remainder of the book trying to track Ai-ming's movements over the years. Much of the novel is a vivid and often heartbreaking account of the lives and hardships endured by an earlier generation of Marie's family who lived their entire lives in China, starting in the late 1950s and ending with the violence of June 1989, a 30-year swath that includes the Cultural Revolution, the death of Mao, the rise of Deng Xiaoping and the trial of the Gang of Four. For many of us in the West, the story of Communist China is a daunting and impenetrable tale of repression and brutality. Our knowledge is riddled with gaps and our comprehension rudimentary at best. Maybe we know a few names and phrases, but the pieces don't necessarily coalesce into a coherent rendition built on cause and effect. Thien deploys considerable narrative skill and a highly developed sense of drama to help us attain a more solid understanding of what took place during those years by relating the story of a group of people whose talents and ambitions centre on music, and who suffer severe and sometimes fatal trauma from the immediate and lasting effects of government policies imposed by a rigid and unfeeling totalitarian regime that treats its citizens like pawns on a chessboard whose lives are not their own to live. The narrative is sometimes disorienting, with its frequent shifts of setting and period and a sizable cast of characters. But the cumulative effect of the suffering depicted in these pages is emotionally devastating and memorable. With Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien vaults into the front ranks of Canadian novelists, serving notice as well that she is writing sophisticated fiction for an international audience.
    • 5/5
      This is a wonderful written family saga of recent Chinese history with a lovely focus on music, epic novels and love. A young man watches China transform after a brutal civil war, falls in love with western music, endures the Cultural Revolution and throughout the events leading up the Tienanmen Square massacre.
    • 4/5
      This Booker prize short listed novel is a story of fragments and shards, stops and starts, texts and copies, mathematics and unfinished symphonies and words with dual meanings. Ostensibly, this is the tale of several related families set in and around the cultural revolution in China, but also springing forward to Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Canada in the early 90s. It describes the struggles in particular of Sparrow, a talented composer, who--in order to preserve his family--destroys his own work and is put to laboring in a factory (and dreaming of a perfect silence). It also describes his lover-in-all-but-physical-deed Kai, who has a “purer” peasant family history and a quicker turn to the Red Guard and thus prospers as a musician in Beijing despite the revolution, yet loses his soul.

      In some ways, Thien's writing is unconventional with quick shifts of point of view. In others, it is quite conventional, and symbols hit you on the head like cartoon anvils. However, the novel grew on me, as the restrained passions (even at times passivity) of the characters acquired over time a narrative momentum and quiet emotional charge. Terror, denunciations, humiliations, beatings, false confessions, disappearances, vicious mobs, and wasted lives are part and parcel of this novel, so it is no easy read, but there are survivors and there are heroes and a host of well-drawn secondary characters.




    • 4/5
      A long, and intense (especially the last 100 pages) family saga focused on the lives of Sparrow, a professor of Music at the Shanghai Conservancy, and his student Kai. We learn of Sparrow's mother and aunt's experiences as traveling singers, his aunt Swirl's marrying Wen the Dreamer (son of a landlord, who has his land confiscated). Years later, Sparrow's daughter Ai-Ming comes to live with Kai's family in Vancouver, Canada. A decade + after Ai-Ming disappears into the US, Kai's daughter Marie goes to China, searching for her and leaving her own message to her in the form of Sparrow's last musical composition, now played everywhere.A magnificently complicated story, with many characters, many upheavals, and with hope throughout.
    • 5/5
      This is a novel of epic scope and ambition, a complex family story that starts in the China of the 1950s and ends in the present day. The pivotal events are the Cultural Revolution, and specifically the destruction of the Shanghai Conservatory and the denunciations of the musicians there, and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and their violent aftermath. There are also many other themes - largely musical but also some intriguing digressions on Chinese writing and mathematics. Thien's characters are memorable and I found the book compulsively readable and moving. For most of the book I thought this was one of the best books I had read all year, but later I felt a little let down, firstly because of a glaring factual error in which she claims that Bach and Busoni were born 300 years apart (the true figure is no more than 181) and also because the story lost a little impetus and clarity of focus towards the end. I still think it is the best book on the Booker shortlist and would make a worthy winner
    • 4/5
      Do Not Say We Have Nothing traces the impact of China's political revolutions on two families from the mid-20th century to the present day. Marie, the daughter of Chinese immigrants in Vancouver, begins her story in 1989, with her father's death. The story reaches back in time to the Cultural Revolution, when Marie's father, Kai, was a student at a Shanghai music conservatory. His life intertwined with that of Sparrow, a composer and professor at the conservatory, and Sparrow's cousin, Zhuli, another student at the conservatory. The three are separated when the events of the revolution catch up to them. The story continues with Sparrow's daughter, Ai-ming, and her aspirations of attending a Beijing university. The student protests at Tiananmen Square change the direction of her life. A mysterious Book of Records provides a link from the past to the present.The book's recurring themes include music, mathematics, Chinese characters and their shades of meaning, the social and psychological effects of the lack of self-determination, familial duty, love, and friendship. The first section covering the end of the Communist Revolution through the first years of the Cultural Revolution is the strongest part of the book. The characters are well rounded and the physical setting is vivid. The second half that centers on the events of Tiananmen Square isn't as sharply focused, and Ai-ming is not as fully developed as the other major characters in the book. Perhaps that's intentional, though. As a child of the Cultural Revolution, her life has always been controlled by the state. The well-deserved attention this book has received from major literary prize committees has it poised to become Thien's breakthrough novel.This review is based on electronic advance reader copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      This year's strongest contender for the Man Booker Prize: Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. It is an epic, wonderfully imagined tale of two generations struggling through China's political campaigns, first in the 1960s, then in 1989. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is an incredibly intelligent and ambitious novel; it is multi-faceted, combing theories of mathematics and language with literature and musical composition.Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a complex work, however, and can be hard to follow. Initially, the story seems to be about Marie, then Marie and Ai-Ming, but it isn't long before the reader is catapulted into backstory and stories within stories. It's easy to forget Marie even existed in the first place, which is unfortunate because I was anchored in her tale and her tale was effortless reading.I had some difficulty staying connected, but in full disclosure I believe much of this was my own fault. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is the sort of novel that needs to be savored. By its very structure, it requires a careful reading. In my effort to read the entire Man Booker shortlist before the announcement (made difficult by US publication dates), I sped through this novel in a mere fourteen hours (not nearly enough time for me and for a work of this magnitude). As I approached the concluding chapters, I sincerely regretted that I hadn't taken more time to enjoy this great novel.For the last several years, the Man Booker Prize judges have favored historical works. Many of these contained chapters from humanity's brutal history. Assuming the judges do not feel the need to deviate from the pattern for the sake of breaking the repetition, I don't believe this year will be an exception. Madeline Thien will win the 2016 Man Booker Prize.