Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine ThienMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
The struggle is real. While the poor characters in this book can sympathise with this phrase, so can many of the readers. This is a highly commended, critically acclaimed book, shortlisted for the Man Booker 2016 Prize and, at the time of writing, the front-runner for taking home the prize. Yet, I couldn't make it through 100 pages of this book. It's just impossible to read. I found myself distracted, mind wandering, often during endless paragraphs of senseless sentences. Analogies and metaphors which were either poorly translated or just poor distance the reader further from the book. Overly mature characters with balanced points of view feel disconnected from any semblance of humanity. Typos don't help, and no one can convince me the errors I spotted weren't typos.
What should be a striking, moving story about displacement, politics, heritage and loss becomes a chore to understand, forget enjoy. I know a lot of people loved and will love this book - the central premise is too hard-hitting to ignore - but the writing style is too off-putting for some of us plebeians to continue. The sporadic attempts at explaining Chinese words and characters is also poorly inserted into the narrative. While interesting, they act as paragraph-long door-stops for the already sluggish narrative.
For a book that starts with an emotionally-charged sentence like 'In a single year, my father left us twice', you'd expect an emotionally wrought journey that brings tears to your eyes every other page. Well, it doesn't, and it's only downhill from there.
I am usually allergic to giving up on books, but with this one, I just couldn't continue. I'm hoping others will change my mind, or a more patient me will pick it up again. But, for now, there are other fish in the sea for me to delve into and enjoy! Eventual Booker winner or not, this book may just not be the one for me.
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