3.5*

I don’t know what to make of this novel. Thien writes beautifully but I’m not sure that I understood what she was trying to do. The historical characters are interesting as is the structure.

I kept calling this ‘The Memory of Records.’

The first book where I thought would work great as a novella. I didn’t need the stories of the 3 books. While I did wiki to see if they were real people (yes), all I wanted was the story of Lina and her father surviving “The Sea.” Her father explaining his past was so phenomenally interesting and moving. I wanted more of that.

I got this book thru NetGalley back in March, didn’t realize I had to review on there (lol) and then got from the library. It was solidly written and I would read another of Thien’s books.

‘Nearly fifty years stand between then and now, but his words approach me like a warning. The world we deserve. The world we can imagine. They are a map and caution, as I try, once more, to find the Sea. p5

‘The strangeness of the buildings, how they grew out of each other, must’ve been created by necessity. Windows sometimes turned out to be doors, and rooms turned out to be hallways.’ p16

“Maybe you would write it down. Not all of it. And not now, but later on, when you’re older. When you’ve lived a long life, here or somewhere else.” p22

‘So many other detours had happened between youth and old age. But this is true, for everyone who arrives by chance, who grows old and countries not their own.’

“Do you think devotion is a kind of happiness?”

Overall, this was a good book, but it was a bit hard to follow. I really appreciated the historical figures and all of the research into their backgrounds that the author put in, but it left me feeling like prior knowledge of them would’ve been a lot more beneficial to my reading of the story, which I did not have. Also, for a majority of the novel, I was unsure about how all of the different perspectives connected to each other and even what relevance they had to the with the main character, which came across as very disconnected to me. I thought this was a very well written story, and I did enjoy the ending, once things can together a bit more. It did leave me with a lot to reflect on, but I felt like gaining a full understanding of what the author was trying to do here was a just bit out of reach for me.

I am not sure how to review this book. I'm not even sure how I feel about it?

The shortest way for me to describe this book is that it's a very philosophical book, about philosophers philosophizing - but while on harrowing adventures.

And generally, I'm into that, although, I think it would have helped to know that going in. Instead, I was expecting something more like Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing, a book I loved and greatly admire.

When it became clear that I didn't totally get what was going on, I tried to let it wash over me and I found myself rapt in places and highlighting many passages in others. I think it might be better on re-read because there is so much depth to mine, but I'd have to be in the right mindset to dive in again.

In some ways, it reminded me of Cloud Cuckoo Land - with interwoven stories from different moments of history, but unlike Cloud Cuckoo Land, it was anchored in history and reality in a way that resonated much more with me. I definitely felt a much stronger emotional connection to the story and the characters.

On paper, I can see that this is quite the literary achievement but it's also a puzzle that I'm not sure I totally solved, which takes away from the experience for me a little bit, hence the four stars.

I received a digital Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review.

3.8 stars
This book exhausted me, it was both mesmerizing and confusing. The melding of stories is noteworthy and all deal with displacement, struggle, friendship and learning. The parts I understood, I loved. A much more knowledgeable reader would appreciate it more no doubt.
This is not a beach read, it is for someone on a quest to delve into the lives we were handed and the courage it takes to survive, regardless of who we are and when we are in time.

Decidedly one of the most beguiling and memorable novels of the year (and it's only May).
Delighted to include this title in the May edition of Novel Encounters, my column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer, Canada’s national lifestyle and culture magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

The cover and title does not give credit to how wonderful this book is.

This book, full of sorrow and hope, was a wonderful read.
It is full of self-discovery, family, love, and hardships - from living in the beginning of wars, escaping from conflicts, living as refugees, testing beliefs, and surviving.
I love the way the story of Lina, Hannah, and others, although different, blend together.
This book is a must-read.

Having loved Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing, her newest, The Book of Records, was one of my most anticipated new releases of 2025.

It didn’t disappoint.

Seven-year-old Lina and her father live in a place called “the Sea” which is actually a building that looks out on the ocean. While most people seem to come there only briefly en route to (hopefully) safer places, Lina and her father have not moved on, because they are waiting in hope of reconnecting with other family members.

It turns out they aren’t the only semi-permanent residents and they come to build a community or pseudo-family with others who are there.

If this summary seems vague, it’s both of necessity (to prevent spoilers) but also because The Book of Records is a gossamer thing. It’s not drawn with hard, sharp lines but rather, much is suggested with slender, mist-like threads.

In their hasty departure from home, Lina’s father has grabbed three volumes of an encyclopedia of great thinkers—the ones about Bennedict Spinoza, Hannah Arendt, and Du Fu—and it is their stories and their philosophies which anchor the story as Lina digs further and further into them.

The Book of Records is a book about both the people and ideas that can support you as you face challenges. But it’s about so much more.

I was fortunate to be able to see Madeleine Thien interviewed by Elamin Abdelmahmoud at the Toronto Public Library on Monday and her deeply thoughtful answers gave me much to think about the book I’d finished just hours earlier. Thien has also just been on CBC’s Bookends with Mattea Roach. If you read the book, you’ll want to check out one of these after you read it.

The Book of Records is a very cerebral book. Grounded in the words and ideas of many great thinkers (there’s a long list of references at the end of the book), it helps to do a little side-Googling as you read. It also plays with ideas of time and space and memory, but never lays out mechanisms precisely so as to keep the focus on the ideas rather than the specifics of “how” things come to be. To enjoy the book, you need to submit to the ambiguity, be attentive to patterns, and mostly, focus on the ideas about, as Thien says, “how we are to live in the world”.

I unfortunately did not finish this book. It was just not my type of book. What I did read was ok and the writing was good. If this is your genre then I think you would probably like it.

We have reached a place in history where I feel that we are all far too comfortable with the belief that there is something out there that’s coming that will permanently alter our reality. We consume media in the form of films, television, books and podcasts that all feature characters that ignored harbingers of doom and were left depleted by alien invasions, viral outbreaks, zombie hordes or just a straight up, all-consuming apocalypse. We’ve seen fictional presidents stand among citizens and military fighter jets to proclaim victory before the battle itself has ever been addressed or fought. We’ve read about the fall of empires because one character inspired a nation of millions to rise up. We’ve watched and rewatched the moment that a single perfect shot ended a tyrannical movement to cloak the universe in a specific tone of darkness.

But we are generally so focused on these heroic and triumphant figures and movements that dominate the story and provide all of the tension and all of the action that rarely do we ever address the maddening silence, the endless confusion, the unanswered questions that come with those that exist outside of the fray, those that are unaware of what’s going on and have no inkling of how to express or deal with the growing fever inside of them that even they don’t understand.

At the age of seven, Lina, the narrator of Madeleine Thien’s fourth novel The Book Of Records, finds herself stuck in a place that is clearly difficult to explain and yet somehow rings so vividly in my mind with each new revealing and delicious sentence. Lina and her father made a hasty escape from their home in Foshan in China that Lina has difficulty remembering the details of beyond the fact that her mother, her older brother and her aunt all stayed behind without them. The duo finds themselves at a location that one inhabitant refers to as sort of a confluence of multiple water paths in the ocean - a piece of land, rumoured to be a former military base that is affectionately referred to by it’s residents as The Sea.

But while Lina and her father end up taking residence in The Sea for many years while Lina grows up, the overwhelming majority of people that arrive at it’s West Gate entrance ultimately depart within days or even hours of their first arrival and travel to other regions of the world upon ships and boats that appear almost daily in the waters surrounding The Sea. But the more that Lina questions her father as to why they are unable to leave, his insistence that he will never leave deepens and Lina finds herself resigned to a fate where she won’t get the chance to see her remaining family ever again or have the opportunity to attend a real school before she becomes an adult.

Inside the surrounding walls of The Sea, buildings have morphed over time and bleed into each other and stack atop each other creating what appears to be something akin to a Kowloon Walled City on the water. Lina becomes convinced that she can see her home city of Foshan in the distance on the horizon and starts asking other inhabitants what body of water exists right outside the walls of the city. When she impossibly receives different answers from every single person that she questions, her father warns her that she will never find a way to be content if she cannot separate what she desires from what really is.

In their exile from Foshan, Lina’s father rescued three books from their family home for their journey - three volumes from of a set devoted to great figures throughout history. One volume dealt with the renowned Chinese poet, Du Fu. Another volume covered the life of famed Age Of Enlightenment philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. While the final volume spanned the life of the German writer, historian and philosopher, Hannah Arendt. Lina’s father reads to her from these artifacts until she is able to read them to herself, wearing out the bindings of the books from use.

Some years after Lina and her father establish a more permanent residence in a high rise located deeper inside The Sea, Lina discovers a door in the building’s hallway that she is certain didn’t exist before that moment. Through this door, she meets three neighbours and finds that their residences all connect with each other and with the section of the building in which Lina and her father reside. These three new neighbours appear to have lived in the building for many years despite Lina only just having being made aware of them. As she begins to spend time with her new neighbours - Jupiter, Bento and Blucher - and makes them each aware of the stories told in the three volumes of books that she carries, they each regale her with tales of what they claim really occurred in the lives of the three historical figures presented in the books. As Lina listens to these tales and studies her new neighbours, she begins to see undeniable similarities between them and the figures they each seem to know so much about. What would feel like an impossibility of time and space in any other place begins to feel like a real possibility amidst the unanswerable question that is The Sea itself.

With The Book Of Records, Madeleine Thien has written a masterpiece of fiction that blends together a story about family, the different ways that history can be interpreted and remembered and a study on what our place is as humans in the larger fabric of time and space. I found myself taking small breaks at the end of each chapter just to gasp at both the sheer audacity and wonder of everything that I had just taken in. This book is reckless in it’s overall beauty and in it’s capacity to push your imagination and the boundaries of what you believe is possible.

Thank you to Knopf Canada and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this gorgeous story.

Madeleine Thien's lyrical prose beautifully submerges the reader into the detached, out-of-time atmosphere of the narrative world of The Book of Records. Deeply philosophical, this book is for readers attuned to literary speculative fiction. It is thoroughly researched and rich with historical references, yet deliberately unmoored from linear storytelling. Thein's commitment to form and texture over plot will not suit everyone. Those seeking a clear-cut narrative or a tightly structured arc may find the novel slow or diffuse.

The Book of Records is a beautifully written philosophical odyssey. And for the right reader, it’s an unforgettable, resonant experience.

*3.5 stars*

Intriguing, mystifying…

This is the first book I’ve read by this award-winning author and I walk away with mixed feelings.
This is historical fiction where the characters, and me as the reader, find ourselves awash in a tangible, if ambiguous, reality. A girl and her father were living in the Sea – a place where they struggled to survive with the meagerest of belongings. Pulling in real people, from different historical times, brought an intriguing element to this very much fictional story. How did they fit into this woman and her father’s world? Why were they there?

Each character had a story to tell and how those stories connected was not obvious, at least not to me. This was not a breezy read for me as I felt out of my element, trying to understand how it all fit together. With my usual need for the tangible and linear, this forced me out of my comfortable reading zone, to pay attention, to look for the hidden meaning within the stories within the story.

To be honest, by the time I turned the last page I still feel like I hadn’t entirely ‘got it’ which left it a bit unsatisfying. I look forward to reading it again, to find those nuances and connections I missed the first time around…

The prose in this book is beautiful; the story is complex and emotional. This was the first book I read by Madeleine Thien, but won't be the last. I feel that this book is best if you go in blind, but if you like lit fic and speculative fiction, you'll love this, 4.75 stars!

Read courtesy of NetGalley.

Where to place this wonderful novel? Historical/fantasy/speculative/fiction?
Thien has given us a fascinating story of love and learning to understand oneself and their place in the world.

<b>The Sea Within Us</b>
<i>A Kindle ARC review of the Penguin Random House Canada hardcover/eBook/audiobook to be published May 6, 2025.</i>
<blockquote><i>Heinrich said their problem was not that they over valued books but that they valued almost nothing else as highly.</i></blockquote>
<i>The Book of Records</i> is not an easy book to come to grips with on a first reading, especially as an eBook which I had *thanks* to a NetGalley ARC from the publisher. I think that I would enjoy a physical copy in order to more easily grasp its structure by being able to flip back and forth through its episodes. As it was it seemed as if it were 4 novellas which randomly shifted in and out of focus. And those novellas are told in maybe 10 or so episodes each which are not in a clear order.

You enter the book with the sense that it will be a sci-fi or cli-fi view into a flooded world of the future, a refugee crisis triggered by a climate crisis. By the end we learn that it is 100 years since the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Gorges_Dam">Three Gorges Dam</a> (2006) project in China. A young girl Lina and her father are apparently stranded at a migrant waystation called The Sea. They are separated from the rest of their family for reasons that don't become clear until later. Lina reflects on their life and gradually she ages 50 years or so into the future and it becomes her life's memoir.

Among their few possessions are only 3 volumes of a set of 90 biographical books about famous personages. The 3 books are about writer Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1977) and Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu (712-770). The lives of the 3 historical figures are paralleled with people that Lina meets at The Sea. We learn about the historical lives in a seemingly random order while periodically returning to the future world. Each probably takes up about 1/4th of the book, but each is told in about 10 episodes spread throughout.

I previously only knew anything about Hannah Arendt and it sounded very true to the life story that I know, even if Thien is inventing the dialogues etc. It is basically Arendt's escape from Nazi Germany and then from Occupied France through Spain/Portugal and eventually to the USA. The Spinoza is his shunning by his Jewish community due to his atheism, so a different kind of running away. The Du Fu is about how the poet was not accepted for his poetry in his lifetime and was instead struggling to get a position at the Imperial Court to support his family.

So in a way it is 4 novellas making up a novel. The confusing element is that the stories drift in and out not necessarily in any order. It is Lina, Arendt, Spinoza, Du Fu, Lina, Du Fu, Spinoza, Arendt etc etc all randomly mixed up maybe 10 or so episodes for each. I guess each of the characters is escaping or migrating or being rejected by their societies in their own way. That is the connection as best as I can explain after a single reading.

While the order of the structure was confusing to me, each reading was immersive and I found myself quite engaged in each of the 4 story lines while I read them. I particularly enjoyed the passage about valuing books which I excerpted above. This is probably a 5-star for the writing and it is only my poor understanding and grasp which causes a reserved 4-star rating in this case.

My thanks to Madeleine Thien, Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advance ARC copy for which I provide this honest review.

<b>Trivia and Links</b>
My previous read of Madeleine Thien was her 2016 Giller Prize winning novel [book:Do Not Say We Have Nothing|31549906] (2016) which I reviewed and rated 5-stars as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1710514774">We Are Nothing, Let Us Be All</a>.

There is a podcast interview with Madeleine Thien about the process for the writing of The Book of Records at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct6vt7">BBC Sounds</a>, April 29, 2025.

There will likely be several reviews and interviews after publication that I'll add to this section.
Initially there is an early summary at <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-book-of-records-by-madeleine-thien-1.7439724">CBC Books</a> from February 13, 2025.

Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for an advance copy of Book of Records.
This author writes beautifully.
And, with a unique idea of “The Sea” which seems to change to be whatever it needs to be, many readers would find this to be a book that checks multiple boxes. I could see fantasy readers, social justice leaders, historical drama readers and others connecting to this one.
Having said that, my excitement to pick it up waned as I kept reading.
I’m not sure where I wanted the book to go in the 2nd half but it lost me a bit.
Overall, decent read. 3.5 stars.

I enjoy Thien's work, so I was excited to have the opportunity to read this novel. She did not disappoint. Although it is written in a style that may not appeal to every reader with its twists and turns of worlds and reality, I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't find it confusing at all. I was intrigued by the varying characters that were introduced, and the discussions that ensued. The mystery surrounding Lina's father always piqued my interest, as well. I am not a great fan of speculative fiction, but I am interested in physical conundrums, quantum theory, and philosophy. I felt Thien presented this futuristic, looking-glass world in a clever way , and I highly recommend it to readers both of speculative fiction and those pondering the deeper questions of humanity and responsibility.

Many thanks to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to review an ARC this book.

Madeline Thien’s writing is intense and complex, but also contemplative and reflective. The central character is Lina, a child when the story begins. In an indeterminate time, a catastrophic event seemingly caused by industrial ‘progress’ and human greed has flooded much of the world, forcing the relocation of entire populations for long periods and often more than once. The unrelenting migration forces apart families, and Lina and her father are separated from her mother, aunt and younger brother.

Thien sketches in some contextual details but there is a vagueness and ethereality about the setting that captures the unmooring of global society. Ships, shores, rising waters, seas that are both threatening and life-giving, devastating droughts, water-born plagues, are fundamental to the crisscrossing stories in the Book of Records, history itself.

A dedicated reader before the exodus, Lina is permitted to bring only three books with her. Her random selections are three volumes of a standard biographical for schoolchildren. They recount the lives of the philosophers Du Fu, Baruch Spinoza, and Hannah Arendt, each of whom tell their own stories in chapters alternating with Lina’s discussions about the books with her refugee neighbours in a surreal waiting place also called The Sea. Fate, chance, fear and resilience in worlds gone mad are strong elements throughout each story. A stray cat, Brother Orange, is unrooted in time, and the only constant in all the stories that are told, revised, retold, and committed to the Book of Records.

This is a book to be savoured, read slowly and at a pace to allow for thinking through lyrical passages and memorable quotes. Things happen ‘outside of time’ and parallel histories and characters add to the mysticism of the experience. The world that Thien depicts is mythical but also very real in that much of what happens in Lina’s time is actually happening now. As Lina surmises, ‘All we had to do was stand perfectly still and let the past catch up to us.’

And the 2026 Booker Prize goes to…

The Book of Records is one of the most beautiful, daring, and intellectually rich novels I’ve read in a long time. Genre-defying and emotionally layered, it blends a dystopian future shaped by climate catastrophe with the enduring weight of personal and historical displacement.

A young girl and her father flee an unrecognizable China, plagued by torrential rains and a rising ocean that has swallowed parts of the land. They find refuge in a place called The Sea. In the rush to leave, the father grabs three books — about Hannah Arendt, Spinoza, and Du Fu — which become the unlikely anchors of their new life. At The Sea, neighbors begin to retell and reimagine the lives of these thinkers. As the narratives intertwine, we begin to understand not only the scope of global upheaval, but also the more intimate ruptures: a family fractured by betrayal, a daughter slowly uncovering the truth of why her mother and brother stayed behind.

This is a novel about displacement, memory, identity, and what it means to endure constant upheaval. Each character — past and present — is shaped by exile. And through them, the book asks: who are we when everything around us is changing, and we have no choice but to change with it?

It’s not an easy read — nor should it be. It’s intellectually demanding, emotionally searing, and best approached with care and attention. But if you meet it where it is, it offers profound insight and rare, luminous beauty.

A book of our times, and quite possibly of our futures — where survival requires compassion, connection, and a willingness to carry one another’s stories.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the advance copy. And thank you, Madeleine Thien, for this masterpiece.

I really loved the opening of the book. It was the kind that as an Asian reader can relate to that it speaks our stories, and the books selected are all having significant value not only to our ancestors but a whole generation's memory. Well done!