13th Canadian Challenge - 3rd Review - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien was a fairly overwhelming read.  I suspect I would have felt this way under any circumstances, but as it happened I read it in a single day, while taking the train to Ottawa and back.  Based on her discussion of the importance of music, and specifically Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, I made sure that I had both versions loaded onto my iPod Mini for the journey.  I listened to the 1955 recording twice on the way up, along with other classical pieces, and then the 1981 recording on the way back.  Interestingly, Thien mentioned that she started listening to Gould's Goldberg constantly while writing her novel in cafes in Berlin (to drown out background noise).   It eventually became a leitmotif in the novel, but only later on.  As she worked on the later parts of the novel, she switched to Gould's 2nd recording. She estimates that she listened to the piece close to 10,000 times while writing the novel!  But the Angela Hewitt performance a few weeks back was her very first time she seeing it live!  While I do like the Goldberg Variations, particularly the 1955 recording, I can't quite imagine listening to it that many times.

At any rate, the novel is basically focused on the repression of the Chinese state, since the Communist Party took control, looking at it through the prism of musicians who were deeply embedded in the Western music tradition.  Thien makes it clear that the official party line on Western music changed at several points over the years.  At one point, it was encouraged, as Western music and art was viewed as a tool to help modernize China and Chinese society.  But then there was a strong turn away from Western models to more of a nativist approach where Chinese traditions were valorized and glorified and anyone viewed as being too Western was subject to very intense criticism and even punishment.  This was never completely uniform, and Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, apparently did shelter a Beijing symphony and opera, though they could only perform state-approved works.  As the Cultural Revolution faded out in the mid 1970s, many musicians were rehabilitated.  Some resumed their lives and careers, while other, more broken by the societal upheavals, never recovered.

As if this wasn't enough, Thien has an entire second section that delves into the Tiananmen Square uprising. While Sparrow, one of the musicians prominent in the first section of the novel, gets caught up in these events, the uprising is portrayed as more of a general questioning of the power of the State and not specifically about repressing music per se.  While it is clear there are linkages between the two halves, mostly having to do with unchecked State power and the psychology of crowds, they are written in different styles.  Then there is also the question of the relevance of the Canadian connection.  The entire novel is framed as Marie, a Chinese-Canadian mathematician living in Vancouver, learning about these events, some of which involved her father, but most only involving family friends.  I'm sure this set up was put in place so that Thien could explaining/justifying her outsider perspective and her "right" to tell the story in the first place, given that she has little to no connection with China, though she did eventually live in Hong Kong* for 6 or so years.  However, this framing device did seem a bit unnecessary.

My overall impression of the novel is just being a bit overwhelmed, particularly by the repetition of the self-criticism and shaming session (sometimes leading to literal stonings). It doesn't quite rise to Solzhenitsyn-like levels of documenting just how bad it was/is to live under Communist China, but she's getting there. I was probably the most interested in the way that people transformed The Book of Records for their own uses, though it certainly seemed very labour-intensive! Given that I read it in one huge gulp, I'll be processing for a while to see what I really thought of it. I did find the first section a bit confusing as it jumped around the various characters and timelines and it wasn't really clear what was a reconstructed story and when was the writing switching to an omniscient narrator perspective (which it did from time to time). I thought the second half generally worked better, since it was so much more focused . Maybe we really needed all the backstories and she couldn't have just written about 1989 (I'm thinking something along the lines of Ibuse's Black Rain), but I do think the work as a whole is a bit unbalanced. I'm not entirely sure how important it was to introduce quite so many characters in the beginning, particularly Sparrow's brothers Flying Bear and Da Shan, who don't add much to the plot, other than showing that some people were more in line with the Party line than others.

I have quite a few notes remaining, but I think I'll cut this review short before it completely spirals out of control.  This is definitely a massive novel, and it is probably best suited for people who like large casts of characters and specifically multi-generational sagas.  This isn't really my cup of tea (any longer), and I would have been more than happy to just read a much more focused book on the Tiananmen Square uprising.  That would have been more effective in my view.

* During the Q & A before the Hewitt performance, Thien talked about the strong parallels between the current upheaval in Hong Kong and Tiananmen Square.