Ruth Ozeki: A Tale for the Time Being (2013, Viking)
Hardcover, 422 pages
English language
Published Jan. 1, 2013 by Viking.
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a …
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.
I enjoyed this one, and it gave me some strength in a time where I needed it. Ruth's parts are a little dull and drug out compared to Nao's parts, and the magical realism may be lost on some people but I liked it. Got me more into Zen Buddhism which has really helped in my healing journey as well.
Content warning spoilers, cw: suicide, bullying, sexual assault
I'm a bit torn as to how to review this. It was all going so well until the last fifty pages or so. Well, two of the main characters are suicidal for much of the book, and there's some pretty awful bullying going on, but it's still, somehow, enjoyable. All of a sudden things are neatly tied up by an intervention that comes out of nowhere, and then we're off into QM and Schrödinger's cat, and Everett's many-worlds interpretation, and I'm just wondering where the novel went to...
I listened to the audio version of A Tale For The Time Being which is nicely read by Ruth Ozeki herself. There is an interesting few minutes after the novel finishes when she talks about the differences between the print and audio versions and I'm confident I chose the right one this time!
The novel is made up of several story strands and I found the Japanese characters fascinating. Nao and her family allows the reader to discover life in contemporary Japan, her great-uncles' letters and diary illuminate WW2 Japan, her great-great-aunt is a Buddhist nun in a temple. By contrast, the other side of the tale, Ruth and Oliver living on a Canadian island, I found irritating and, certainly in Oliver's case, pompous. He came across as a device to explain factual information the reader needed to know and Ruth as a bit of a dimwit on the receiving …
I listened to the audio version of A Tale For The Time Being which is nicely read by Ruth Ozeki herself. There is an interesting few minutes after the novel finishes when she talks about the differences between the print and audio versions and I'm confident I chose the right one this time!
The novel is made up of several story strands and I found the Japanese characters fascinating. Nao and her family allows the reader to discover life in contemporary Japan, her great-uncles' letters and diary illuminate WW2 Japan, her great-great-aunt is a Buddhist nun in a temple. By contrast, the other side of the tale, Ruth and Oliver living on a Canadian island, I found irritating and, certainly in Oliver's case, pompous. He came across as a device to explain factual information the reader needed to know and Ruth as a bit of a dimwit on the receiving end of his lectures. Ozeki explores a lot of theories, environmental and scientific, philosophical and religious. Some of these slot naturally into a story, others felt awkwardly shoehorned. Overall I thought this was a good book, unusual enough to keep my interest while walking my commutes and I'm glad to have heard it read by the author.
