At the start of the first page it was easy to see why Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien has garnered so much critical acclaim this year. Nominated for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, winner of the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for English fiction, and winner of the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a compelling and beautiful piece of historical fiction.
Marie is 10 years old in 1989 when her father leaves her family twice, once as he moves to Hong Kong, and the second time when they receive news of his suicide. As time moves on and Marie and her mother struggle to adapt, their lives are overturned once more by the arrival of a letter from a family friend in China asking for a favour. Ai-ming, the young daughter of a friend of Marie’s father, is in trouble after the Tiananmen Square massacre and is coming to Canada illegally while waiting for the situation to calm down.
The novel is a complicated saga of the connections between two families, weaving between the present day in Canada, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Do Not Say We Have Nothing is filled with stories within stories, as Ai-ming tells Marie stories of her parents and grandparents during the Japanese occupation and the Cultural Revolution, and Marie tries to discover and understand the links between their fathers who both studied music at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in the 1960s.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a stunning and complex novel that grapples with numerous issues in beautiful prose. This isn’t the largest book I’ve ever read at 480 pages, but it’s not one to be rushed through and at times I had to put it down and cry. It’s such a complex novel that it’s difficult to describe it. Thien brings together depictions of war, love, family, friendship, and hope through the characters’ relationships with each other and their love of music as they struggle to survive the new political regime. This is a book that explores what it means to be human in the face of adversity.
Although not a light-hearted or easy read at times, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a beautiful book that lives up to all the praise it’s received. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I’m looking forward to reading more of Thien’s work.
