Madeleine Thien's voyagers embrace humanity. That makes them outlaws

In an epoch successful which we’ve been told that wide data-mining and plagiarism volition pb to a magical artificial quality that volition lick each the large mysteries of life, “The Book of Records” is simply a reminder that quality genius and the artistry of stunning prose are the antidote to AI’s codswallop. Madeleine Thien has penned an all-too-human caller that explores themes of collaboration and resistance, exile and community, and the banality of surviving successful “interesting times.”

Physicists person agelong wrestled with a basal question: What are abstraction and time? As quality beings, we deliberation of clip arsenic the span betwixt the time we are calved and the time we die. We recognize intellectually that radical person travel earlier america and radical volition beryllium aft us, but being capable to grasp that clip relies connected empathy fostered by reading, viewing creation oregon touching past buildings.

In “The Book of Records,” 7-year-old Lina and her machine idiosyncratic begetter are connected committee a 22nd-century vessel carrying them into exile erstwhile helium explains the basal operation of clip and abstraction to her. “He told maine that everything would beryllium evident if I took a portion of drawstring and folded it implicit and done itself to signifier a double-coin knot,” Lina recalls. “The drawstring is clip and the knot is space,” helium concluded. “But they’re the same. See?”

Global clime alteration has caused the oceans to overwhelm the land, and the ship’s passengers are refugees successful hunt of coagulated ground. The metaphor of the double-coin knot recurs passim the novel; each rider is connected his oregon her travel done clip and space.

(W. W. Norton & Co.)

Lina near her household room behind, but for 3 books astir chap voyagers: the Chinese writer Du Fu, Baruch Spinoza, the Portuguese Jewish philosopher exiled to the Netherlands, and Hannah Arendt, the German philosopher who, arsenic as Jew, was forced to fly erstwhile the Nazis took power. Lina knows the contents of these books truthful intimately that erstwhile she encounters Jupiter, Bento and Blucher, who archer stories of that trio’s journeys, she becomes their omniscient companion.

And portion Thien’s publication is simply a caller of ideas, it’s overmuch much visceral, tying unneurotic the sublime joys of being quality and the horrors inflicted by those different humans who hatred each of the things that marque america imperfect but radiant beings. Du Fu, Baruch Spinoza and Hannah Arendt were each formed retired of their communities by authorities who imposed constrictive definitions of acceptable thought.

If we could halt reasoning successful specified constrictive definitions of time, Thien intimates, we would beryllium susceptible of empathizing and knowing that adjacent our astir shattering experiences bash not abstracted america from others. Instead, we would find meaningful assemblage successful the institution of those who person been wherever we find ourselves now. Terence, a antecedently enslaved Roman playwright who wrote “I see thing quality alien to me,” grasped that concept, arsenic person the myriad artists and philosophers who person expanded connected that thought. Human experience, adjacent for those we whitethorn not person idiosyncratic cognition about, helps america recognize our idiosyncratic selves and signifier the empathetic communities truthful indispensable during acheronian times.

Lina’s ain exile begins with the nonaccomplishment of her parent and brother. Years later, erstwhile her begetter is dying, helium yet reveals the concealed that acceptable them connected their path: The monolithic task to nexus computers and humans to hole clime alteration failed, and present everyone faces extinction. What volition hap to quality clip with nary 1 determination to grounds it?

Thien translates analyzable topics into art, making the esoteric profoundly resonant. When Baruch gets his bosom broken, she writes: “He closed his eyes, but it lone made the satellite wrong him much vivid, truthful helium tried to representation himself betwixt the stars, unburdened of each sensory feeling,” clip a whirlwind to him. “The satellite intervenes successful everything we do,” she writes of his thinking, “and we crook and stumble successful its innumerable fragments.”

We drawstring unneurotic fragments to marque consciousness of the senseless, Thien observes, “searching backwards for a cause.” She describes the “passionate indifference” that Arendt substitutes for love-making erstwhile her matrimony becomes a breached timepiece that can’t beryllium fixed. Reading Thien is to respect however she brush-strokes connection to make beauty.

Exile is grief. And exile is acceptable into question by trauma, whether that beryllium from a authorities acceptable connected genocide oregon clime alteration and the ravaging effects of colonialism that person stripped the onshore of each sustenance. Refugees from Central America, Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, refugees formed retired of their religion assemblage for heresy, artists made exile by the delusions of their patrons, and those near exile connected America’s streets due to the fact that of economical disparity oregon home unit person each been torn distant from what they love, each the things they’ve lost.

I’ve hesitated astir giving distant excessively overmuch of the crippled of “The Book of Records” for the aforesaid crushed I don’t spell connected guided tours of a metropolis I’m visiting. Thien’s publication is afloat of unexpected moments of quality and pleasance I don’t privation to ruin for those astir to participate its pages. Delight is successful discovery.

In our ain absorbing times, it’s a large alleviation to beryllium reminded that nary of what is happening is alien. The idiosyncratic insistence that “no 1 has ever faced this aforesaid moment” is the origin of truthful overmuch pain, exacerbated by those governments that question to erase the quality past of betrayal and absorption and struggle, evoking a mythical, conflict-free path.

Destroying connections to clip and assemblage is the extremity of authoritarianism. As 1 of the novel’s characters says, “Survival required disobedience, and each of them indispensable go an outlaw. So beryllium it.” Thien has written a superb outlaw novel.

Berry is simply a writer and professional surviving successful Oregon.