This is an engrossing read that centers on a local Chinese girl growing up in Beijing in the midst of college when the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened. I didn't know much about Chinese history, and this captures the sentiments of multiple generations in one households. It should come as no surprise that they has different views on dissent.

I felt this to my core: the ups and downs of a first love, the passing of a beloved family member, the transition to college and figuring out how to set your path. It is a beautifully written journey with insight into the high political tensions of the time and how various people navigate it. Complex characters in all aspects of the story draw you in throughout. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in history, China or simply a coming-of-age story. It was powerful, and I think this one is going to stick with me for a long time.

The most compelling part of this novel was the relationship between Lai and her grandmother. I think she bonded the most with her and I thought the grandmother was very spunky.
The author does show the generational relationships and differences between Lai and her mother and between the mother and grandmother.
The novel is very long and I thought some of the dialogue was superfluous and could have been cut back a bit.

It was interesting to learn more about the political landscape of the 80s in this format. Good writing and rich story

I was finishing my sophomore year of high school in 1989, and only vaguely aware of what was going on in Beijing at the time. I knew of the student protests, and I remember seeing news stories of the massacre. It was eye-opening to read the story from the point of view of someone who experienced it in person.

This is a captivating exploration of personal growth set against a backdrop of social and political awakening. Beginning with the endearing portrayal of Lai's eccentric grandmother, the narrative expands to include her intriguing family members—a jealous mother, an emotionally distant father, and a favored younger brother.

The story vividly captures Lai's journey through life, highlighting the stark contrast in how women are undervalued both at home and in society, compared to the reverence often given to men. The colorful and diverse characters enrich Lai’s world, offering a rich tapestry of experiences that shape her development.

While the pacing slows during Lai’s college years, this period is crucial for fully understanding the depth of her characters and the evolution of her political consciousness. The seemingly mundane college experiences, though sometimes dragging, are essential in portraying the authentic struggles and growth of the protagonist.

What starts as a personal narrative gradually transforms into a political one as Lai confronts censorship and becomes increasingly aware of the broader societal issues around her. Her eventual decision to join the protests reflects her growth from a self-focused young adult into a politically conscious individual.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. All of the opinions are my own. Thank you Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley!

One of the most dramatic and complex book I have read. This is based in real life event of Tiananmen Square massacre that happened in China in 1989. The writing is well written, yet complex. There are some parts that makes me uncomfortable. I wait a bit a while to read the part of the horrible event. Overall, the book is decent and alright.

i wanted to like this book, but it felt underedited: it was long, and contained lots of contradictions, and never quite cut to the feeling or the history i was hoping to get from it.

TW: self-harm.

Tiananmen Square is a messily beautiful and poignant coming-of-age novel, set amidst the backdrop of 1970s China and culminating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Written in a semi-autobiographical form, the story follows teenaged Lai as she grows up in China. It captures her teen hood, learning to love the written word and education, grief, and familial love.

I really appreciated the multi-layered approach to a historical event in this book. I thought I was getting a politically charged historical fiction, but Tiananmen Square reads more like a coming-of-age novel that happens to be set in a politically charged moment – this works really well. Often feeling disjointed between the many issues the author wanted to include – teenage infatuation, grief, Chinese family dynamics, oppression, to name a few – Lai brought a wonderfully messy and naïve authenticity to the story and is a great narrator. There’s a lot of exploration into first loves, losing one’s virginity, self-harm, oppression and teenage infatuation. Wen cleverly writes characters that embody the Communist party sentiment, throwing in snippets that make you feel the danger and oppression amidst teenage joy and naïveté.

A fascinating and emotional read, if not a touch long. There’s plenty of Lai-Gen scenes in the middle that could’ve been removed or truncated. I just wish there was a little more Tiananmen Square content and a little less teenage infatuation – Gen was obscenely annoying.

Actual Rating 2.5

Lai lives with her family in Beijing during the 1970s, playing with her friends and going to school. But when a prank goes wrong, her idyllic childhood is quickly shattered during an encounter with the police. She encounters a bookseller who gives her access to western literature, and begins to learn more about the world around her. She goes to college, she meets more people who encourage her to think beyond what she’s told as she finds tensions around her escalating between the students and the Communist Party.

This one is a slow historical fiction and coming of age with a focus on Lai’s family rather than on the titular events. I expected more information about growing up in China during this time, more of a focus on the politics and ideology and how that impacted everyone daily. But I hardly got a sense of that, with the focus rather on the relationships within the family and the protagonist’s first love. This made the book feel much more like a very lengthy memoir.

Probably the first 75% of this work focuses on Lai, her childhood, and her education. Despite the length of this, I just never felt connected to the protagonist in the way that I should with a work that is this character-focused. The secondary characters were similarly flat, not serving beyond the role they had to move the plot along.

Overall, this book didn’t work for me the way I hoped it would and almost every aspect felt like it didn’t go beyond surface level. If you’re interested in historical fiction that feels more like a wending memoir, then you may enjoy this one. I used both the ebook and audiobook versions of this work. The narrator did a great job with this story. My thanks to NetGalley, Spiegel and Grau, and Spotify Audiobooks for allowing me to read this work.

In this complicated and moving novel about Lai as she grows up in 1970s Beijing, readers explore the myths and reality of the communist Chinese government in the post-Cultural Revolution half of the twentieth century. Following her childhood through her time as a student at Peking University, readers see Lai and her family -- patriotic mother, reclusive father, formidable grandmother, and excitable brother -- grow as they and the city change. When she crosses the line between the myth of the Chinese state with a traumatizing altercation with the police in her childhood, her growing interest in literature (especially Western literature) and a group of individualistic artists at university lead to a further pushing of the boundaries of state policies into the pivotal year of 1989. With complex and complicated characters, Wen draws on events from her own life and the historical backdrop of 1970s and 1980s China and the boundary-pushing activities of its citizens. Full of vibrant details, events, characters, and locations, Wen brings 1970s and 1980s Beijing (from the perspective of a young college woman) to life in such meticulous and realistic detail. A challenging, complex, and moving novel bringing the Tiananmen Square student protest to life from one woman’s perspective, this book is an absolute must-read.

Trigger warnings: self-harm, depression, abuse, military violence, sexual violence (reference, not on page)

This story was not what I was expecting. Given the title of the work, I thought that the Tiananmen Square would feature in a large percentage of the book. In reality, the massacre takes place in the last 15% of the book. The rest of the story is the building up of a cast of characters so that when the massacre happens the reader is fully immersed in the world of Lai and her friends.

We follow the main character of Lai from childhood through her first years in college, through her first romances and friendships that both build Lai up and break her down. There are periods where as the reader I wanted Lai to smack some people around and stand up for herself, even though I knew that I made similar mistakes in my first relationships. The loss of Lai's grandmother is a particularly poignant narrative that drives home how important people are in our lives and in forming our personalities.

Lai finds solace in books and reading and a theater troupe that gets involved in the revolutionary fervor of campus life against the government. In these spaces, Lai begins to develop into her own character. I felt that this story was well told and that the time taken to develop the characters and the world that the massacre destroys is well spent and leaves the reader with a feeling a true devastation in light of what is lost due to the massacre.

I did feel that the middle of the book felt a little long and I wish there had been more resolution for the self-harm that is featured in the story but then dropped without much discussion. Otherwise, this is a heartfelt story that opened my eyes to the world of the Tiananmen Square massacre in a way that was not only focused on the death, but on the life that existed in the square as well.

This is a book that, ultimately is very little about the event to which it’s named. And somehow that makes the event all the more tragic.

Lai Wenn weaves a poignant, cerebral kind of story. A fictionalised autobiography in which her life is documented, her family, her dynamics, her friendships, even her fears and struggles. They all resound with you because ultimately no matter the culture or era, they are the human experience. Her words transfix you and guide you through her childhood, the root where her fear began, and where it eventually grew to lead her. And even when we read about her experiences in Tiananmen Square, she is not the focal point. It is as if her view is skewed away from her own impact. And as such, you feel as if you are living it with her.

This is not a historical documentary, or even a biography. This is a fictionalised telling of a young girl whose path led her to a historical event. And the role people played along the way in her life. If you want a documentary, turn on national geographic or read a research paper.

Triggers are generally limited though there are descriptions surrounding self harm, her feelings involving why she does it etc, and the act itself. There’s some language, but nothing you wouldn’t hear on television, and frankly the sexual aspects are barely worth note or description beyond the fact they exist and mark points in her life where she grows and realises things.

All in all, I loved this book. It’s one I would definitely reccomend.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc to review!

I was not ready for this one. Went in completely blind, just liked the cover (as I often do), and was stunned.
This story reads beautifully. The writing is neat but expressive. I had never heard of these protests but had to spend some time on Google after reading. Parts of this story had me outright SOBBING.
❗️Trigger warning for self-harm(on page) and political violence.❗️
A little more than mid way thru, I realized this author was giving her account of true events. Lai Wen is a pseudonym as she must protect her family. My heart literally ached for this woman as she finished her story of loss, love, friendship, coming of age, deconstruction, and trauma.
Released on the 35th anniversary of the protests.

✊🏼May we always be brave enough to stand in the face of tyranny/political abuse and listen when those around us have tough things to say. 💞

Heavy but beautiful.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you Spiegel & Grau and the author for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review

BLURB
In this beautiful coming of age story, we follow Lai from her childhood throughout her life until she participates in the protests, which turn into the massacre of Tiananmen Square

I believe in the power of stories. Books are sometimes mirrors that show you yourself. And other time they are windows, granting you a glimpse into another. This story, although a work of fiction, gives the reader a look into the horrors that happened June 4th, 1989. The author using a pseudonym leads me to believe that there is more individual true experiences woven within the story. By the end, I was opening sobbing, heart heavy with the horrors of what happened that day and hurting for those who experience such brutal violence from their government. A hard read, but definitely worth it.

Well this was a disappointment. With a title like "Tiananmen Square," and the author writing under a pseudonym (presumably because of the contents of the book), I figured this book would go into the politics that lead to the incident known as Tiananmen Square. But alas, this is not the case! With a few references to the Cultural Revolution through the main character's grandmother, that was about as political as it got. Lai, the main character, dates an absolute awful man who is politically radical but also elitist, and wants to make change "the right way." What led to Tiananmen Square? I don't know. What happened at Tiananmen Square? I don't know. Why did Tiananmen Square happen? I don't know. Also, the entirety of the events of Tiananmen Square occurred at about 80% in and lasted for a single chapter, so I am not expecting anyone who read this book to know the answers to any of these questions.

This made me so mad I DNFed at 82%. I feel like the publisher went with this title to trick us into thinking this was a politically-driven book, when in reality it was a fictionalised memoir of the author. I felt lied to.

Thank you to Spiegel & Grau and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I picked up this book because I knew an historical event had happened on Tiananmen Square, but didn’t know the specifics or the how or why behind it. This book gave me all of that and more! It truly is a glimpse behind the curtain. You learn what the students were feeling and what their hopes were. You learn about people who were at the center of it, as well as the people on the sidelines who supported in other ways.

The author is just an average girl trying to navigate growing up (something we can all relate to) against the backdrop of political turmoil (something I can not relate to). She’s completely honest about how she was feeling and how she could have been more courageous at certain points. I appreciate the author being vulnerable and letting us all learn from her life.

This was a really powerful read. It was released on June 4, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and told from the perspective of a student who was there and survived. While you know the whole time that it is building to the protests and student movement, the book focuses on her childhood and relationships and early life experiences and contrasts her perspective with those of her family members and friends. The book is technically fiction but it is based on the author's real-life experiences. Highly recommend!

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 - Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen is historical fiction told in the style of a memoir. The narrator, Lai, is a young Chinese girl at the beginning of the story and we see her grow into a university student at the pivotal moment of the students protests in 1989. This book started off strong but took way too long to get to the pinnacle. I'm not entirely sure that the entire middle section of her time in high school was even needed. Or maybe just some highlights of it? This book needs a serious editing down of filler sections and paragraphs. Overall, I enjoyed the story and the writing style, but it could have been much shorter. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the arc in exchange for my review.

I read a lot of books and Tiananmen Square was the only book in 2024 that I've given 5 stars. The author pulled me into her life and I was captivated. I didn't want the book to end. Really good, thought provoking books are hard to find. I feel blessed to have found this one.

I have to admit that, other than the brief paragraph in my history textbook in high school, I knew very little about the events and period in this book. I always appreciate historical fiction, which opens my eyes to times and places I know little about. This is how I grow as a reader and a person.

The author's writing and characters were very well done. You get pulled in and get to a point where putting the book down is hard. I would gladly read more by this author.