I thought defrecords were working OK

serialization.clj

(defrecord Foo [a b])
;; => user.Foo

(def example (Foo. 3 (sorted-map :hello 5)))
;; => #'user/example

example
;; => #:user.Foo{:a 3, :b {:hello 5}}

(def serialized (binding [*print-dup* true] (pr-str example)))
;; => #'user/serialized

serialized
;; => "#=(user.Foo/create {:a 3, :b #=(clojure.lang.PersistentTreeMap/create {:hello 5})})"

(read-string serialized)
;; => java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No matching method found: create (NO_SOURCE_FILE:0)