I DNFed this at 30%. The premise was enticing to me, and while the atmosphere of this read is beautiful, it was a bit difficult to follow the switch between each character’s story.

4.5, rounded up. This is not going to be for everyone, and reading it required greater focus and attention than anything else I've read this year. But the payoff was enormously satisfying.

I also realize that I'm one of the few people right at the middle of the Venn diagram for enjoying this novel: I'm a professional scholar in the history of philosophy, the Tang-dynasty poet Du Fu has been a lifelong inspiration to me, and I'm an absolute Hannah Arendt superfan. Since I already was familiar with most of the historical events and figures, and had a working knowledge of Thien's conceptual structures and theoretical framework, I could just sit back and let this wash over me.

But for many of you out there, this novel will probably sound like homework, or dramatized Wikipedia entries. And I'm not sure if a basic synopsis will convince anyone to pick this up.

Thien has piled up layer after layer of unwieldy elements, like a literary Jenga tower: near-future rising-seas cli-fi, extended philosophical ruminations and theoretical physics speculations on being and time, magic-realist speculations on past-life reincarnation, a tender broken family drama , richly-detailed immersive biographies of three great historical exiles, critiques of authoritarianism with Chinese characteristics, a purgatorial no-place where all spaces and times converge, the tensions between emotional truth and historical fact, optimal strategies in the game of Go, the problem of historical structures versus individual agency.

The novel is artfully structured, intercutting five different perspectives of one listener and four long-winded narrative voices. First, the adolescent Lina dutifully cares for her ill computer-scientist father, as they stop in a ramshackle floating city named The Sea to recover from their harrowing flight as climate refugees from mid-21st-century Foshan, China. This sprawling maze of retrofitted buildings are literally "made of time," welcoming travelers fleeing what appears to be a collapse of post-industrial societies amidst global warming, and appears to be a manifold connecting all times, spaces, and wanderers.

All that Lina owns are three books from a much larger set of "the lives of great voyagers," fictionalized children's narrative biographies of Du Fu, Baruch Spinoza, and Hannah Arendt. Her three next-door neighbors in The Sea-- Jupiter, Bento, and Blucher-- appear to be incarnations of these historical figures, who seem to have transcended time and space to recount their harrowing experiences of exile, freedom of conscience, and personal trauma. These three stories are thematically interconnected, and figures from one timelines pop into the others for cameo appearances.

In the novel's middle section, Thien narrates the biography of Lina's father Wui Shin, a brilliant cyberspace engineer, his impoverished and orphaned childhood, his meteoric educational success, his collaboration with the reigning techno-surveillance regime in China, his (un-?)principled betrayal of the woman he loves, and his ultimate quest for redemption. This seemed much closer to a David Mitchell novella, but the shift in tone makes it more affecting, and lends color and weight to the other narratives.

I hope this will give you an idea of the novel's too-muchness, and there's a lot of disbelief to be actively willed away. Not everything works, especially the rushed pacing of the final section, and Thien has left too much of Du Fu's biography to shoehorn in. Sometimes the cerebral ruminations crowd out the emotional impact, and there were moments in the novel when wanted to be feeling more than thinking.

The Book of Records is a story filled with stories. A girl and her father hold onto and tell stories from the past of overcoming hardship, sharing the lives of Du Fu, Benedict Spinoza, and Hannah Arendt. To me, the organization felt a bit disjointed and not consistently interesting. The commentary on humanity is deep, but it felt like having a conversation with a friend you know has gone a bit too far down a rabbit hole and lost touch with reality. I thought I would really enjoy this much more as I am familiar with philosophy, especially Hannah Arendt. While I understand the baee concepts, this book includes many philosophically-fueled conversations contextualized in history, and I found myself wishing I was anchored in a reality more concrete than being lost in a setting of altered time and space with Lina. The Book of Records has so much to say about history and philosophy, but the organization left me still questioning what this book was really trying to say.
I am sorry I did not love this read. That cover though? Beautiful.
Thanks to NetGalley and WW Norton & Co for this ARC!

A novel that leaps across centuries past and future, as if different eras were separated by only a door.
Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China.

The Book of Records is a quiet, ambitious novel that reads more like a philosophical journey than a traditional story. At times it can feel a bit meandering, but the questions it asks about memory, guilt, and what we carry through history really stick with you. Thien’s writing is thoughtful and poetic, and if you’re in the mood for something reflective and slow-burning, this one has a lot to offer. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book had such an interesting premise. The cross between historical fiction and generational imbalance is intriguing, and drew me into this book. The stories told in this book were impactful, and all too familiar in this day and age. The prose and style of writing were exceptional, but my only critique is that the pacing and general vibe of this book felt sluggish and meandering.

The language here is beautiful with stories that so clearly speak to our present moment; however, I had a difficult time coalescing them into a meaningful whole. This book is, in parts, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, MANIAC by Benjamin Lebatut, and (at least based on my understanding of Part II) a sort of techno dystopia out of something like a Murakami novel. Each piece on its own is meaningful and interesting, but I just couldn’t get them to come together into something that felt complete.

Looking back 50 years, Lina recalls that as a child, she and her ailing father, Wui, lived at “the Sea,” an enormous abandoned military compound sprawled on the shoreline whose location was uncertain — Lina and Wui believe the compound buttressed the South China Sea, although other inhabitants said it was the Atlantic or the Baltic. Lina and Wui occupied an apartment on the labyrinthine 12th floor where they watched the refugee boats pull in and depart. For most of its denizens, “the Sea was just one stop on the way to a better place.” For Lina and Wui, it was not a temporary way station as Wui suffered from an illness that made the Sea a final destination.

Lina and Wui fled their home in Foshan, China, leaving behind Lina’s mother, brother and aunt but carrying three tattered volumes from a biographical series for children entitled “The Great Lives of Voyagers.” The volumes that Lina retained chronicled the lives of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Portuguese Jewish philosopher who was excommunicated to the Netherlands for his radical views on religion; Du Fu, the Tang dynasty poet who lived in poverty despite repeated attempts to find employment with the imperial government; and Hannah Arendt, the German philosopher who fled Europe after the rise of the Nazis. Lina befriends three of her neighbors, Bento, Blucher and Jupiter, who appear to be the ghosts or avatars of the historical figures from her books and who reinterpret the lives of the three celebrated voyagers who were each exiled refugees. When Wui reveals his role in the family’s tragic past, Lina looks to her new friends for counsel and guidance.

Thien has crafted a rich and beautiful novel that is an innovative blend of speculative fiction, history, and biography. She addresses themes such as displacement across time and space, resistance, exile, dystopic disaster, immigration, community, and love. This is challenging fiction that serious readers will find enriching and rewarding. Thank you W. W. Norton & Company and Net Galley for an advance copy of this bold and remarkable novel.

The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien (May 20). This transporting tale first takes us to a place called The Sea - it’s an inbetween place, a shape shifting place, and a place where time isn’t what we know it to be. This is where we meet Lina and her father, but they aren’t planning on staying. After all, the only thing they’ve brought with them are three books. One book about the Chinese poet, Du Fu. Another about the Age Of Enlightenment philosopher, Baruch Spinoza. The last is about the German 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. When Lina’s neighbors at The Sea start to mirror these books, doors are opened to all of time. Read this if you love philosophical novels and stories that allow you to travel through time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book, releasing May 20th!

This review is rushed since I'm literally running out the door on a 10-day international trip, but Madeleine Thien, you've done it again! Wavered between a 4 and a 5 for this, but rounded up because it was such a great reading experience. Thien is such a wonderful writer that even the philosophical elements of this book (which got denser as it went on) still felt readable to me. This book explores themes like the way our memories carry through time, the responsibilities people have to each other even in times of turmoil, and the ways that small and uncharted moments in our lives become turning points of change. Great characters, wonderful historical elements, engaging storyline-highly recommend this one!

I had to abandon ship at 20% as this was an excruciating slog for me. I'm sure this novel will find its readers, but I was not up for the very disjointed writing and the mix of historical figures and stories jumbled with an odd speculative sort of fantasy/science fiction setting. This is a very philosophical novel with DEEP THOUGHTS and I just did not have the patience or bandwidth to keep on with it. Thank you to NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for providing me with a digital review copy.

This is a complex and beautifully written novel--I loved it, and it made me think. Lina and her father were forced to flee their homeland, losing track of their other family members in the process, and are now marooned at the Sea, a mysterious, labyrinthine building that most refugees leave quickly, hoping to be on their way to someplace else. The Sea seems to be between time and countries, a place that's just in-between, where existence is precarious, as the residents live on found fragments. Because Lina's father is very ill, they cannot move on, and Lina slowly builds a friendship with the Sea's other long-term residents. At the same time, she reads and rereads the three books they were able to take with them, biographies (part of a much larger set) of Du Fu, Baruch Spinoza, and Hannah Arendt, wanting always to know more. As the novel continues, it becomes clear that these biographies blur with the lives of their three close friends, who seem to know more about these historical figures than it seems like they should. The connections grow organically, built through Lina's questions, and while this is a novel about ideas, it's also a deeply satisfying story. Don't be scare off by its complexity--this book is worth some work, and I was completely caught up in it.

Thank to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

3.5 stars.

This isn't the type of book that I usually pick up, but despite that, I was very surprised that I ended up liking this.

This novel doesn't have a typical beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it focuses more on historical stories interwoven with each other alongside the main storyline. There's a cli-fi setting and an incident that elevate the stakes up a notch, so the main storyline with Lina and her father isn't just set dressing for the historical storylines.

I won't lie, the actual philosophy aspect is lost on me, but I definitely did enjoy the Hannah Arendt and Baruch Espinoza storylines. As someone who took a couple of critical theory courses during undergrad, it was really cool to see how these philosophers' personal lives shaped their thinking.

After reading about Hannah Arendt's extraordinary life (as reimagined in this novel), and with the rise of fascism in my own country, I have definitely elevated The Origins of Totalitarianism on my TBR. I never knew that a philosopher's life could be so interesting and so tragic. Kudos to this book for (re)introducing me to a very important and very topical read.

Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for this arc.

I was really excited by the premise of this novel and was thrilled when I got the ARC. However, I never was able to get into the story and spent multiple sections of this book confused as to what was going on.

The main character of this book, named Lina, lives in a community called the Sea where time works differently. While living at the Sea with her father, Lina hears the stories of her neighbors while also learning the story of her father.

This book is highly philosophical which leads me to believe that if I had a much deeper understanding of philosophy, I probably would have enjoyed it more. My gut says there is a target audience for the novel who will probably really enjoy it, but I was not that target audience.

“In this morning’s seminar, another of her teachers, Rudolf Bultmann, a professor of theology, had spoken of Saint Augustine’s trinity of no longer, not yet, or not at all. The belief that this world is transient, temporary, made of time. Thus love of the world and its temporal objects, love of another person, creates perpetual mourning.”

After losing the other half of their family, Lina and her father arrive at The Sea, a temporary but mysterious dwelling. While there, they befriend a few other residents, each from a different place and time: Bento, from seventeenth century Amsterdam; Blucher, from 1930s Germany; and Jupiter, from Tang Dynasty China. Each of these residents adds more reliable and intimate information to the three books Lina has managed to bring with her, while Lina and her father tackle their own haunted past.

I have not read Thien’s last novel, DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING, though I had heard innumerable excellent things about it. I was very much looking forward to this one, but unfortunately, the premise outweighed the execution. I loved the philosophical themes of the transience of memory and the mutability of time. However, while this novel is undoubtedly ambitious and admirable, for me, it was not an enjoyable read. There was not much joy or life in the writing, almost as though Thien had a great idea about which she was not entirely passionate.

The storytelling too is not quite for me. The language is what I call “smoky” in my head; it escapes meaning and I become unsure of what is going on at some points as a result. I had to go back and read several sections to see if I had missed something, and when I often hadn’t, I was unsure of how a certain conclusion was reached.

Overall, a great premise but lacking in the execution. Honestly though, I might have just not been intelligent enough for this one. Two and a half stars.

Beautifully philosophical and timeless (both in-story and out of it). a simple tale, at its heart, with a lot of ideas to tell you. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

The Book of Records is an epic and imaginative quest for home, in a world where time flows like water, and no clear boundaries exist between past, present, and future. At a crossroads of migration, Lina and her father meet figures from long ago, who share their stories of hardship, the fallibility of memory, and the joys of discovery. With elegant and sweeping prose, The Book of Records is an unforgettable meditation on what it means to remember.

Thank you NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Co. for the digital ARC.

this was such a good book! I really like the way that this author wrote, how they tied themes together, and how they made this book emotional and enjoyable. I think the book would be good for a book club!!

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!