BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE FINDS MUSIC IN HER WORDS
Vancouver-born author Madeleine Thien is among 13 writers — and one of two Canadians — nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction. Her third novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, made the long list announced Wednesday. Judges will announce a short list Sept. 13. Thien, now based in Montreal but back in Vancouver visiting family, took time Wednesday to chat with Stephanie Ip of Postmedia News
Q Congratulations. How’s it been so far?
A I only learned this morning because it was announced around four in the morning Vancouver time. I kind of woke up to the news. Just overwhelming warmth from friends and love — and my family’s very, very proud. They’re here in Vancouver. It’s very wonderful that I just happen to be ... with them, so it’s been great.
Q Do Not Say We Have Nothing is about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s and the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. How do you turn something like music into words when people are reading your words, and not necessarily hearing the music?
A What I tried to do with the language was almost to create an intense, emotional echo or resonance of the music so a lot of it comes through the composer himself or the violinist or the pianist — those are the three main characters at the centre of the book. I tried to express the music as they would actually feel it — a combination of their mind and body as they perform it or as they create it.
Q Writing is obviously a very challenging and competitive field, so what’s it like being acknowledged in this way?
A I think the prizes are almost an inescapable part of the writing life, mostly for the reasons of making a living, of being able to get your books into the world, having that path between your books and the reader in the bookstore.
Q As a Chinese-Canadian writer — knowing that you come from this culture and history where English is not the first language — what’s it like to be able to make this your career, to flourish in a way that maybe the previous immigrant generation would not have been able to do here in Canada?
A It seems almost miraculous. My mother’s from Hong Kong and my father from Malaysia and my grandparents from China so, yes, English is my mother tongue but it wasn’t from my parents. When you’re a child and you’re the only one for whom this is the mother tongue ... you are the one who translates for the family, you’re the one who, in a way, has this instinct for the language.
I’ve always seen it as ... something that also creates a separation between the generations, between me and my parents and definitely with my grandparents, but something that also allows me to give something back to them.
Q What do you miss most every time you return to Vancouver?
A I’m always struck by the changes — it changes very quickly. I think even the neighbourhood where I went to school, which is Mount Pleasant ... it’s changed so dramatically, all the way up to the Main Street SkyTrain station. Sometimes when I walk through it, I don’t recognize landmarks anymore.
Something is always shifting in this city and there’s a kind of struggle for the direction in which it will go.
Q So what’s next for you and what can we expect?
A For the next few months, it’ll be a lot of touring across Canada to different places talking about this book and on the side, I’m hoping, with the really hectic travel schedule, I can work on the new novel. My life does tend to be a bit nomadic ... but it’s in the mind for me. If I sit at the computer, I can focus on just me and the words, so it doesn’t entirely matter where I am.