Book Review - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a compelling family saga spanning three generations set in one of the most tumultuous and inglorious periods in China’s recent history. It is an ambitious novel that attempts to express the heartbreaking experiences of the characters in times of painful afflictions in the abstract language of classical music. I’m giving this novel 4.3 stars.

As a total layman to the field of classical music, I am not in a position to judge whether the author’s attempt has succeeded or not. But as a reader of historical novels, I love this work and think that it excels in telling a profoundly sad story of loyalty and betrayal between friends, family love and guilt, against a backdrop of insane political struggles and human brutality during the Anti-Right Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen violent crackdown on students.

I had previously read a few non-fiction titles about this historical span: Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, The Doctor Who Was Followed by Ghosts: The Family Saga of a Chinese Woman Doctor, Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants, and Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Those books made me vow never to read about that period again. I hesitated for a long while before finally picking up this book. While reading it, my heart was once again drowned in deep anger and disillusionment. I can never never understand why there was this non-stop repetition of human cruelty and inanity in the name of some ideological shenanigans.

I applaud Thien’s effort through her novel in reminding us yet again the ultimate futility of repression of the human spirit; an individual’s yearning for freedom of expression is only human nature.

Her writing is fluid and full of imagery. For my personal taste though, the imagery is sometimes a bit too rich.

These are passages that I found particularly affecting:

I think, you can look at a person and know they are full of words. Maybe the words are withheld due to pain or privacy, or maybe subterfuge. Maybe there are knife-edged words waiting to draw blood.

It was a time of chaos, of bombs and floods, when love songs streamed from the radios and wept down the streets. Music sustained weddings, births, rituals, work, marching, boredom, confrontation and death; music and stories, even in times like these, were a refuge, a passport, everywhere.

In this country, rage had no place to exist except deep inside, turned against oneself. This is what had become of her son, he had used his anger to tear himself apart.

Ba doesn’t even know how afraid he is, she thought. His generation has gotten so used to it, they don’t even know that fear is the primary emotion they feel.




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