Reviews - The Book of Records

103 reviews for:

The Book of Records

Madeleine Thien

3.67 AVERAGE

sarahreadsaverylot's review against another edition

4.0

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

krin's review against another edition

4.0

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.

scottjbaxter's review against another edition

I read Saul Bellow’s Herzog and Humboldt’s Gift in 1989 and I loved them because they taught me that a novel could be about reading other books. Or some writers, especially Iris Murdoch, wrote books about big ideas. I suppose that Thien’s book aims to be somewhere in between the two categories.

The Book of Records starts with a frame tale, the sort that John Barth was fond of that he found in the collected tales called One Thousand and One Nights. Many decades after the fact, a daughter, Lina, and her father, Wui Shin, are traveling through the sea — some sort of ethereal liminal space called the Sea. Along the way, the two discover the lives of three people from a text called The Great Lives of Voyagers. Those three are 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, 20th century historian and political theorist Hannah Arendt, and Tang dynasty poet Du Fu. Most of the book is taken up with the challenging lives the three faced in alternating chapters. However there were, at least in my opinion, two flaws in these chapters. One flaw was that the stories were engaging, but we learn almost nothing about the ideas or books these people wrote. The second flaw was that a good amount of space was given to the lives of Spinoza and Arendt, I thought that there should have been more material about Du Fu.

The audiobook has five different narrators, and Thien herself narrates the sections where Lina and Wui Shin are traveling on the sea. She has a breathy voice which adds to the general floating dreaminess of those liminal space chapters of the frame tale. These abstract sections make for a bold contrast with the three biographical chapters of people trying to escape totalitarian suffering, particularly Arendt. At some point, the connection between Lina and Wui Shin becomes more clear as we learn that the father was “a systems engineer managing the structures of cyberspace” and that they are now fleeing people working for that government.

I remain ambivalent about this book and whether I do or do not recommend it.

28 May 2025. kindle and Audible audiobook. 335 pgs.

alex9's review against another edition

3.75

challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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.

britbrit's review

4.5

challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

emelynreads's review

I have no idea what's going on

crystalbawls's review against another edition

While I appreciate the purpose of the various character’s stories and the overarching premise, I had trouble connecting with the book and wanted to spend more time at the Sea instead of in the historical storylines of the characters. Not for me today, but I will go back to it eventually.

Seeing Thien discuss this book at the Toronto Reference Library was utterly magical.