THE books you treasure most are the ones which make you sad when they end; where you miss the characters almost as friends.

Most of us get that first sentimental pang for a finished book, and the characters within, when we’re young. That feeling of warm loss when a novel is over, is plangently comforting in some strange way - like the memory of childhood dinners. That’s the alchemy of writer, reader and page.

Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen is one such book. I finished it some days ago, and just writing of the novel now gives me a stab of nostalgia and a jolt of pleasure.

From the opening page, Wen speaks to what’s universal within us all. The book begins with Wen as a small child, running her finger down the thick veins in the hands of her beloved and rebellious grandmother, marvelling at what age can do. I remember identical thoughts when I was little, sitting by my grandmother as she taught me to read.

The book isn’t an autobiography, however. It’s a highly-fictionalised account of Wen’s formative years. She’s a fan of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels of young girls coming to adulthood and it shows - though Wen is the greater storyteller and a more gentle writer, less bitter, but also less a stylist. 

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Lai Wen is a pseudonym. China wouldn’t be kind to this author or her family if her real identity was uncovered.

We’re in classic bildungsroman territory throughout: the coming-of-age story of a Beijing girl born in 1970. We’ll follow the fictional Wen all the way to Tiananmen Square and the murderous events of 1989 when the Communist Party cut down pro-democracy student activists.

Wen’s family is wonderfully eclectic, both working class and brimming with fierce intelligence. Her grandmother was the last of the girls forced to bind their feet. She refused to accept the monstrous practice, and after her feet were broken as a child she unbound them, leaving her crippled but free from this mark of male brutality. 

Wen’s father is a low-level academic who suffered some unnamed horror during the Cultural Revolution. Her mother is mean and cruel, sharing the authoritarian and controlling traits of the regime Wen will soon find herself pitted against.

The family lives in a concrete apartment block. The sounds and smells - neighbours making love, domestic violence, dumplings and pork - peal from the page. Wen is a smart but shy kid. She’s got plenty of friends, though.

One night we get a taste of what’s coming - some stark foreshadowing - thanks to the misadventures of Wen’s merry band. An American dignitary is visiting Beijing and the city is placed under curfew. Wen’s gang sneaks out to spy on events and are arrested. Just a child, Wen is subjected to appalling violence at the hands of paramilitary police, and left with what sounds like post-traumatic stress disorder.

The adventure, Wen says, “was more than just a game; something had drawn us together in a serious and abiding alliance”. Those words will echo a decade later as Wen courageously faces down the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army with her student comrades.

Wen, very gauche and green, falls in love in her mid-teens. Her boyfriend comes from a wealthy, well-connected family. He’s a snob, a fool and a rampant little sexist who treats Wen like garbage. Some of the most moving moments in the book feature Wen trying to heal herself after some careless emotional wounding at the hands of this idiot she’s fallen for somehow.

AP Photo/Vincent YuChinese riot police. (Image: AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

We’ll learn later what weak stuff this boy is made from; a wannabe rebel, he becomes one of the first to turn tail and run in the face of threats from the state to the students of Tiananmen.

Wen is picked at school for special tutoring thanks to her brain, and soon lands at Beijing University. Lonely, she drifts through campus unseen by most until she’s befriended by the remarkable character Madam Macaw. That’s the stage name of a young theatre student called Anna, who is nothing short of an Orson Welles-style enfant terrible.

In all good art there’s a tension between the Apollonian and the Dionysian creative instinct. Apollo uses art to bring order, and Dionysus uses art to create chaos. Wen is Apollo; Madam Macaw is Dionysus. If there’s trouble, then Macaw will find it and ramp it up to 11.

At times, you’d happily throttle Macaw, as she takes vulnerable young Wen on increasingly dangerous adventures, which carry more than a whiff of self-destruction. Yet, when we learn the truth of Macaw’s upbringing - when we see the circumstances in which she lives - it’s one of the novel’s saddest moments and forgiveness comes easy toward a young girl who’s suffered much and will brave even more.

What’s remarkable about Wen’s novel is that the events of Tiananmen Square only appear in the last few chapters. In other hands, readers would be desperate for the action and violence, but here you want to stall the drama so you can spend more time with these characters you’ve come to love.

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Yet Tiananmen Square hovers over the entire book. From childhood, Wen is constantly glimpsing the ominous landmark, from a window or rooftop. It waits for her, the ultimate place-as-nemesis.

Then, when we finally get to those brutal events, Wen pulls off a trick so audacious it shouldn’t work. But it does. Throughout this book, it’s impossible to not think of Tank Man, the unknown student who dared to face down Chinese tanks alone in Tiananmen Square as the pro-democracy movement was crushed. 

Tank Man is, after all, one of the great images of the 20th century; his moniker synonymous with the square where he was last seen before being disappeared by communist secret police.

I kept wondering if Tank Man would make an appearance. He did, and Wen slots him into her novel like a magician. She brings everything into focus through Tank Man in the book’s final pages. I still feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise as I think of how Wen takes the book to completion, creating one of the most powerful, unforgettable, endings in 21st century fiction. 

You will close this book with these words ringing in your mind: did I just learn the identity of Tank Man?

Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen is out now from Swift priced £20