Review by Kevin Brown
If one were to look in the acknowledgements at the end of The Book of Records, Madeleine Thien’s new novel, it would appear as if she has written traditional historical fiction, given the number of books and authors she references. However, her novel is more complex than that. There’s one main plotline that involves Lina, who has run away from Foshan, China, it seems, with her father. They now live beside the Sea, though what sea that is varies based on who one asks. They almost seem to be in a temporary refugee resettlement camp, as many people stay there for brief periods of time, then leave on ships. Lina and her father, Wui Shin, stay there for years, though, as her father is sick.
When they fled — the reader finds out why in the middle section of the book, which flashes back to Wui Shin’s younger days — Lina’s father took three books from a series of books on explorers; Lina even complains that they were not her favorite three, which is why they were less worn than the others. The three explorers are Du Fu, Baruch Spinoza, and Hannah Arendt, as the series authors included those who explored mentally as well as geographically.
Lina and her father’s room in a building seems to be outside of time in some way — the connection between time and space is a recurring theme in the novel — and their room connects to a room where three people live: Jupiter, Bento, and Blucher. When they find out about the three books Lina has read and reread, they point out how much the books have omitted, and each of them tell her all that’s missing from those three people’s lives, about which they seem to know much more than they should.
What ties the novel together is the theme of oppression and power, as Wui Shin and Lina are fleeing an oppressive Chinese regime, much as Du Fu, Spinoza, and Arendt all had to deal with people in power who tried to repress their thinking, as well as physically oppressing or killing those who disagreed with them. Thien has crafted a work of historical fiction that connects several characters who try to survive, recording their lives and struggles, so that those who live in a time where there are still those who try to suppress ideas and oppress people can find connection and hope.
The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien. W.W. Norton, May 2025.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.
