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A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki (Goodreads Author)

4.01 · Rating details · 90,154 ratings · 11,346 reviews

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, ...more

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Hardcover, 432 pages

Published March 12th 2013 by Viking (first published March 11th 2013)

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Lists with This Book

2013 Man Booker Prize Longlist

13 books — 272 voters

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Interesting Books of 2013

320 books — 1,005 voters

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Sep 23, 2013 Zaphoddent rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Dammit this should have been at least a 4 star book!

Till about the second half of part 3, I was all set to give this rave reviews 'cause Nao's story was so compelling and well written plus there wasn't enough of Ruth's woeful tone to grate on the nerves. Then Ruth's dream sequence comes up and ugh it damn near ruins the bloody book. It's ridiculous! Some psychic, whimsical,
zen bullshit. It's not the spiritual realm that's the problem, it's the fact that it comes from almost nowhere and it sound ...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed-bookkaholic, metafiction, epistolary, absolute-favorites, booker-shortlisted, best-of-2013, magic-realism

If I’d had my way, the 2013 Man Booker Prize would have gone to this novel-writing documentary filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priestess from British Columbia, Canada (by way of Japan). A Tale for the Time Being is a rich reflection on what it means to be human in an era of short attention spans, the dearth of meaning, and imminent environmental threat.

The time being: the present moment is what we’re stuck with now and must embrace. The time being: in the Buddhist viewpoint, each human is entrapped b If I’d had my way, the 2013 Man Booker Prize would have gone to this novel-writing documentary filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priestess from British Columbia, Canada (by way of Japan). A Tale for the Time Being is a rich reflection on what it means to be human in an era of short attention spans, the dearth of meaning, and imminent environmental threat.

The time being: the present moment is what we’re stuck with now and must embrace. The time being: in the Buddhist viewpoint, each human is entrapped by time, which means that we are all in this together; this is an Everyman tale.

On present-day Vancouver Island, “Ruth,” a Japanese-American novelist who is attempting to write a memoir of her mother’s slow demise from Alzheimer’s but has a bad case of writer’s block, stumbles across a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the beach. Inside she finds a cache of old letters and a teenage girl’s diary, disguised as a copy of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu.

The diary belonged to sixteen-year-old Nao (pronounced “now” – is it all starting to fit together?) Yasutani, who cheerfully and informally confides in her imagined reader about her life. The past few years in Tokyo have not been easy for her – she’s been the victim of extreme bullying at the hands of her classmates, and suicide seems to run in the family – but she has a guardian angel in the form of her great-grandmother, Buddhist nun Jiko, who is approaching death at age 104 but still represents the voice of wisdom and a timeless perspective.

In a modified epistolary format that includes diaries, letters, e-mails, and an abstract of a disappearing journal article, Ozeki builds her gentle academic mystery: where did the lunchbox come from? How did it wash up in Canada? Are Nao and the other diary subjects still alive and well, or did they die in the 2011 Japanese tsunami? Alternating chapters contrast Nao’s diary entries with Ruth’s reactions and commentary a decade later. Yet, in a delicious outbreak of magic realism, it seems Ruth may actually have some power to change Nao’s fate.

This is a superbly intelligent novel, with concerns ranging from ocean currents and pollution to the wacky quantum physics theory of multiple worlds. Ultimately, it is about being happy in the here and now – not looking to the past or the future for contentment or hope; and not indulging in regret or wishes. As the character Ruth states in the epilogue: “I’d much rather know, but then again, not-knowing keeps all the possibilities open. It keeps all the worlds alive.” ...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Teresa rated it it was amazing

What a ride. This novel sucked me in and then spit me out, leaving me gasping as it did. I can't say this book is perfect. It's probably a bit flawed, as many novels are, but with the totality of it meaning so much more than any flaws might take away. None of these flaws come from the writing itself, though, and if you feel some things here and there are a bit slow, please be patient -- Zen Buddhism is a big theme after all -- it picks up quickly and flows again, almost immediately.

There are man What a ride. This novel sucked me in and then spit me out, leaving me gasping as it did. I can't say this book is perfect. It's probably a bit flawed, as many novels are, but with the totality of it meaning so much more than any flaws might take away. None of these flaws come from the writing itself, though, and if you feel some things here and there are a bit slow, please be patient -- Zen Buddhism is a big theme after all -- it picks up quickly and flows again, almost immediately.

There are many postmodern, metafictional elements to the telling of this story, ones we've seen before: footnotes (mostly to explain Japanese words), appendices (read them as they're mentioned; they elucidate but don't bore), a main character who is the novelist (and who, I'm sure, is also not the novelist), but they are so well done and seem so accessible and integral to the tale that none jar or feel over-familiar.

The story's told with some humor in the beginning, enough to lull you (with the voice of the young girl, Nao, in the diary) to almost forgetting a couple of tell-tale bits that surely don't mean what they probably do mean. She's too young, you tell herself, that would be too sad, too horrible. And then when you are hit with what she's endured and is enduring when she reaches her 'now', it's that much more heartbreaking and even hard to read. Adding to the growing darkness is the addition of Nao's great-uncle Haruki's secret diary, which contains some of the most horrific things that were done in WWII -- none of that new to me but still haunting, that being a good word for the whole of this novel.

And so many themes, ones I love, ones that I saw in new ways, mostly to do with time and being (and non-being), as you might guess from the title, but still much more: memory, dreams, the effects of violence, stories, reading and writing (who is actually calling into being, creating, whom?). The handling of these themes is masterful, a word I rarely use in reviews, but when I do, I must give the book 5 stars.

At some point while reading, I was reminded of McEwan's The Child in Time (a novel I love) for one particular scene only, but now that I refresh my memory of that book, there's another superficial connection as well. ...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Julie Christine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, canada-theme-setting, best-of-2013, war-conflict, read-2013, east-asia-theme-or-setting

I attended the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference this week. Just before an afternoon workshop on Wednesday, I chatted with a woman who is writing her memoir.

“I don’t read fiction,” she told me. “Are there any good female writers?”

Not “Are there any female writers you’d recommend?” Just, “Are there any good ones?”

Never mind the 813 ways I wanted to respond to the question. I thought of the last great book I’d read, which happened to be written by a woman. I began to tell her of A Tale for the ...more

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Apr 18, 2017 Brina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: asian-american, japan

Ruth Ozeki is an award winning film maker and novelist. A Tale for the Time Being is her third and most ambitious novel and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and Man Booker awards. In this 2013 autobiographical novel, Ozeki details how a woman named Ruth finds a diary, letters, and watch belonging to a teenaged girl named Naoka sealed inside a ziplock bag. These items most likely traveled to Canada from Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A novelist looking for a good story, Ruth Ruth Ozeki is an award winning film maker and novelist. A Tale for the Time Being is her third and most ambitious novel and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and Man Booker awards. In this 2013 autobiographical novel, Ozeki details how a woman named Ruth finds a diary, letters, and watch belonging to a teenaged girl named Naoka sealed inside a ziplock bag. These items most likely traveled to Canada from Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. A novelist looking for a good story, Ruth decides to read Nao's diary in real time, embarking on a journey that has readers questioning auspices of both time and life as we know it.

Ruth moved from Manhattan to a small island off of British Columbia after meeting her husband Oliver at a conference. She brought her widowed mother who suffered from Alzheimer's on her move, consolidating her remaining family to one place. Named Desolation Island by its residents, the island has more flora and fauna than people and is home to thriving ecosystems. This is what originally brought Oliver, an Iocene Era enthusiast, along with his cat Pesto, to live there. A tiny community named Whaletown for the bygone industry, the town is home to quirky people who have fascinating stories to tell. Although off of most internet grids, the setting is ideal for writing, and, for the most part, Ruth enjoys living there.

One day while walking along the beach at Jap Ranch, Ruth finds a diary along with letters and a watch, all sealed inside a giant ziplock bag. Oliver believes that they came from Japan following the tsunami, and Ruth has her interest piqued. Struggling to finish a memoir about her mother, Ruth decides to read the writing of sixteen-year-old Nao Yasutani, a Tokyo resident who moved back to Japan from California with her parents following the dot.com bubble crash. Even though Nao's story captivates Ruth, she decides to read the story in real time in order to honor Nao's memory.

The real life Ruth Ozeki embarks on a multi layered story by telling Nao's tale. A time being is a being in time, and this is how Nao chooses to begin her diary. We find out that Nao is old for her grade and tormented by classmates, that her brilliant father can not find a job and constantly contemplates suicide, and that Nao is so American and would rather be back in California but her friends there have discarded her. Her mother strives to keep the family together and sends Nao to live with her great grandmother, a 104 year old Buddhist nun named Jiko, for her summer vacation. What ensues, is a touching relationship, and one that has Nao discovering and preserving her family history in her diary.

Being an American of Japanese descent, Ozeki desires to write of the kamikaze pilots during World War II. She details how the war was different for Japan and the United States and uses the events of 9-11 to contrast the different perspectives. Nao's father Yaruki is named for his uncle who sacrificed his life for his country during the war. Yaruki #1 was a student studying French existentialism and the least likely of soldiers. Drafted at age 19 near the war's completion, he was chosen for a suicide mission, and, with his death, leads his mother Jiko to take the vows of a nun. Ozeki weaves all of these storylines by showing how family history repeats itself with Yaruki #1 and Yaruki #2, and with Yaruki #1 and Nao. Ruth and Oliver contemplate all of these stories as they read the diary, and are left wondering if Nao perishes in the tsunami or if she somehow survived in time. Although I am usually not one who enjoys reading about alternate realities, I found Ozeki's ideas fascinating, and read quickly to find a resolution for both the Yasutani family and for Ruth.

Ruth Ozeki employs a diary, letters, Buddhist teachings, dreams, and Nao's stream of consciousness thoughts to create an exceptional novel. She expertly weaves many storylines together and writes in third person, even when one of the protagonists is meant to be herself. I found her questioning of the time continuum and using this as a means to bring the world closer together to be a thought provoking concept. A new author to me, I found A Tale for the Time Being both thorough and captivating, and rate this gem of a novel 4.5 bright stars. ...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

Update... this is $1.99 again today as a kindle download. It’s still one of my favorite books. It came out the year that “The Goldfinch” won the Pulitzer Prize.
They were both my two top favorites of the year. Great day to pick up the ebook if you’ve not read it yet!

Update: Wow!!!!!!!! $1.99 Kindle special of 'this' book is a GREAT DEAL!!!! "A Tale for The Time Being" came out the same year that "The Goldfinch" won The Pulitzer Prize. For me ---it was a toss up --as I felt this book was as good ...more

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Mar 17, 2013 Scarlet rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: it-stays-with-you, magic-realism, booker-longlist-shortlist, japan

3.5

A Tale for the Time Being is like one of those assorted platters you get in restaurants - there is a little bit of everything but not everything is necessarily appealing. Unlike dining, however, I'm not at the liberty to pick and choose here. Consequently, my reaction to the overall book is kind of hazy. Some portions blew me away (mostly the last quarter). Some portions made me think. Some broke my heart, some left me appalled, some put me to sleep. And then there were these parts that I sim ...more

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Sep 27, 2014 Debbie rated it liked it

3.5 stars

Sitting here at the bistro with my best friends, and we all order the same exotic dish. They're licking their chops and raving about it. I’m liking it okay, but I get a few bursts of flavor that make me scrunch up my face. Sure, the sauce is great, but it's taking me forever to chew this meat. I'm so busy trying to digest it, I really can't even talk yet. This is an award-winning dish by a grand chef. What is WRONG with me? How come my friends don’t have to chew so much? Isn't the meat ...more

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Feb 11, 2021 jessica rated it liked it

reading this was such an up and down experience for me, which really makes me sad. there were moments i was really into this, but then there were times when i just wanted to quit altogether.

the parts that are good are really good, like 4-5 stars worthy. i loved the look at japanese culture, i appreciated how light is shed on difficult topics such as war and mental health, the themes have depth throughout, and the narrative structure in engaging.

but the parts that are bad completely ruin the st ...more

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Sep 19, 2014 Samadrita rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: man-booker-shortlist-longlist, canada, 2013-releases, by-women-who-matter, in-by-about-america, asian-literature, nihon-ga-suki, human-drama, cherished

3.5/5

Rare is the book which I have simultaneously loved and hated. Rare is the book which has deftly pried open the shell of visible reality to expose the pliant flesh of the human condition with such loving care yet disappointingly sacrificed narrative integrity to manipulate the reader's emotions in the end.

The Nao-narrated portion of the novel appears too served up to be believable. A beautifully decorated obento offered to the smug Western reader who sees Japan as a collage of stereotypes - 3.5/5

Rare is the book which I have simultaneously loved and hated. Rare is the book which has deftly pried open the shell of visible reality to expose the pliant flesh of the human condition with such loving care yet disappointingly sacrificed narrative integrity to manipulate the reader's emotions in the end.

The Nao-narrated portion of the novel appears too served up to be believable. A beautifully decorated obento offered to the smug Western reader who sees Japan as a collage of stereotypes - ijime, hikikomori, jisatsu, French maid cafes, enjo kosai, host clubs, bishounen, zazen, juvenile delinquency, the endemic hatred for gaijin, kamikaze pilots and so on and so forth.

What disappointed me most was Ozeki's unabashed pandering to the Western reader and reducing Nao's life to the melodramatic plot from a campy J-dorama. Not only is she hated and bullied brutally in school for appearing more American than Japanese, but she also has a hikikomori suicidal father who refuses to go find work and lurks on forums looking for suicide buddies. Friendless and lonely, she even dabbles in 'compensated dating' with hentai oji sans. And despite contending with such a misery magnet of a life, Nao's voice manages to muster a sardonic indifference which I found extremely hard to believe at times. The only missing pieces in this perfect parade of cliches are a couple of yakuza members with permed hairstyles and tattooed forearms or loan sharks terrorizing the Yasutani family.

One of the reasons I rated Midnight's Children so highly was because Rushdie never dumbed down India or its distinct sociopolitical features for the sake of winning easy approval of the random European/American reader. In fact, he parodied the whole Western misconception about 'snake-charmers' being a defining motif of Indian cultural traditions without ever alienating his readerbase. As a diasporic author, Ozeki failed a similar test of authenticity in my eyes.

Even the more sublime and endearing bits featuring Jiko, the hundred and four years old Zen Buddhist nun and former anarcho-feminist-novelist, who gives Nao her 'supapawa' to grapple with the cruelties of everyday life, fail to cancel out the annoyance of the cliche plot points.

And the last stretch botched it completely. The quantum mechanics and magical realist bits came out of nowhere and clashed with the stark realism of the earlier parts of the novel. I do not mind a plot straying into the domain of absurdity for the sake of enforcing some token symbolism (the significance of the writer-reader bond in this case), but there has to be some kind of cohesion between the disparate worlds of reality and far-fetched possibility which this novel unfortunately lacked. Also I've watched enough Fringe episodes to remain unaffected by the theories of alternate reality.

Small failings aside, this is an extremely important work which probes the underlying logic (or lack thereof) of wars and xenophobia, factors in the deep and abiding importance of the natural world in an era of rabid climate change, preaches compassion and tolerance towards even those worthy of contempt, and advocates living life for the time being regardless of the woes that may make it difficult to bear. But to rate this any higher would be to go against my beliefs of what a good book should be able to achieve without resorting to gimmickry. ...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Pam rated it did not like it

Shelves: fiction, ya

Warning - everyone else in this world loves this book. It is the story of a teenager, Nao, in Toyko who decides to pour her soul into a diary that washes ashore in Canada into the hands of an author. The author becomes obsessed with Nao who tells the story (actually not really) of her great grandmother, a Buddhist Nun.
There are a ton of themes including East vs. West, search for home and roots, meaning of time, quantum physics, and search for peace and acceptance. Basically it is a metaphysical ...more

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Jan 25, 2019 Adina (taking a break from literary fiction) rated it liked it

Shelves: booker, japan, book-club

This was the first book I listened through Playster* and it was a good choice. While I gave the book 3*, the audio was very well done. It is narrated by the author and she does a wonderful job.

One of my plans for this year is to read more from the books I added to my TBR at the beggining and this one was among the first, on my shelves from Jan 2014. One of those books I really wanted to read but never got to do it.

A tale for the Time Being is not an easy book to digest. It covers difficult the ...more

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Sep 13, 2019 J.L. Sutton rated it really liked it

“Am I crazy?" she asked. "I feel like I am sometimes."
"Maybe," he said, rubbing her forehead. "But don't worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It's your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It's a good thing not a bad thing.”

Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being begins with an awkward plea from 16-year-old Nao simply to be heard. To make a single connection with another human being. Living in Tokyo, Nao writes both about her gre ...more

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Dec 28, 2015 Whitney Atkinson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2016

4.5 stars

Really interesting plot, compelling writing, and this book really made me think. I love how it has actual nuggets of information, so I actually learned things from this book, both about science and Japanese culture/Buddhism. I would recommend this one, but trigger warning for suicide and bullying.

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Aug 11, 2013 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: california, coming-of-age, spirituality, british-columbia, japan, environment

Wonderful tale of a woman writer in a remote coastal village in British Columbia, Ruth, whose writer’s block gets extended when she starts reading the journals of a Japanese girl, Nao, which washes up on the shore in a waterproof box. Ruth becomes totally attuned to Nao’s vivid writing about her life in Tokyo after a childhood in Silicon Valley, her resilience in the face of extreme bullying at school, her concerns for her unemployed and suicidally depressed father, and her enchantment with her Wonderful tale of a woman writer in a remote coastal village in British Columbia, Ruth, whose writer’s block gets extended when she starts reading the journals of a Japanese girl, Nao, which washes up on the shore in a waterproof box. Ruth becomes totally attuned to Nao’s vivid writing about her life in Tokyo after a childhood in Silicon Valley, her resilience in the face of extreme bullying at school, her concerns for her unemployed and suicidally depressed father, and her enchantment with her great grandmother, Jiko, who is nun at a Zen monastery. Ruth paces her reading to match that of its writing and devotes her other time to internet searching for clues to the identity of the girl in hopes of finding out if she is alive. She and her husband speculate whether Nao was a victim of the tsunami associated with the earthquake that damaged the Fukushima reactor back in 2012, somehow finding time to save her journal.

Two other items in the box provide clues, a special watch and a packet of letters in French that she needs outside help to get translated. The identity of Jiko is another puzzle to pursue through Nao’s revelation that she was a radical feminist poet in Japan’s brief history as a democratic republic back in the 1920’s. What Ruth eventually learns (I ain’t telling) are secrets that even Nao didn’t know about her family. Knowledge that could have changed the dangerous directions Nao is pursuing (was pursuing) in her life recounted in the journal (I ain’t telling). Ruth‘s obsession leads her to the illusion of communicating an important message across time in a dream. Other occasions of apparent magic realism are played out against the alternative that Ruth may be getting Alzheimer’s like her mother had (which keeps me from tagging the book as clearly fantasy or science fiction). Ruth ponders:
Who had conjured whom? Was she the dream? Was Nao the one writing her into being.

I delighted in all the characters in the book. That’s where the true life of the novel resides, but the stage set by all the ideas about eddies of time, information and decay, and the boundaries between life and death add to the potency of their performance. The novel has a lot of mind-bending in the vein of Murikami and David Mitchell. Perhaps in homage to the former there is a disappearing cat. In this case the cat gives us an opportunity to toy with the solution to the Schroedinger’s Cat paradox that calls for perpetual splitting of reality into parallel universes. Nao herself is the epitome of “Now” as she imbibes the Zen wisdom of her ancient and beloved Jiko. For her a wave in water is equivalent to the wave of a mountain (“the same, but different”). Nao puts her journal in a cover binding of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” Ruth’s husband addresses global warming by growing a forest of ancient trees of species from the NeoEocene epoch. Somehow all these elements make for something delicious.

This book was so much fun for me, so pregnant with possibilities. I had the illusion that the meaning of our existence was at stake as the tale unfolded. The ominous vast gyre of plastic trash in the ocean, such an awful artifact of our civilization, miraculously delivered Nao’s story to Ruth. Nao’s present is past for Ruth but present in her uncertainty about Nao’s death. As Ruth digs into images of the tsunami on the Internet, she discovers a photo of a six hundred stone tablet above the high water mark inscribed with a warning that translates, “Do not built below here.” She realizes our ancestors “were speaking to us across time, but we didn’t listen.” She makes some fascinating analogies after pulling random video clips of the disaster off the Internet:

Does the half-life of information correlate with the decay of our attention? Is the Internet a kind of temporal gyre, sucking up stories, like geodrift, into its orbit? What is its gyre memory? …The tidal wave, observed, collapses into tiny particles, each one containing a story. … a mobile phone ringing deep inside a mountain of sludge and debris …a medical worker clad in full radiation hazmat wanding a bare-faced baby squirming in his mother’s arms.

It’s hard to truly account for the pleasures I found in this weird and alluring story. About a fourth of my Goodreads friends who read this were not so enamored (3 or fewer stars). The sparkle of ideas were just flashes; the warp of reality was just leg-pulling contrivance; the sizzle of characters cartoony, etc. So your mileage may vary. For me I am already weighing prospects of her two other novels which already sit murmuring on my shelves, “Pick me, pick me!”

...more

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May 07, 2019 Laysee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: five-star-books

‘A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.’ - Ruth Ozeki, A Tale For The Time Being

A Tale For The Time Being is a deceptively simple title. I took it at face value and considered that I would be entertained by a story just for now, perhaps for a little while. As it turned out, the title has a totally different meaning. This tale is an unusual ‘message in a bottle’ type of story that reaches magically across time to ...more

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Jul 20, 2018 Andrew Smith rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A plastic bag washes up on a beach, it contains a Hello Kitty lunchbox and inside are some letters, a diary and a watch. The beach is on an island off the coast of British Columbia and the bag is found by Ruth, a local writer (it’s funny how so many novels feature writers). Ruth discovers that the diary is written by a girl named Nao and it tells the story of her life in America and then in Japan. It’s a somewhat harrowing tale. In California, Nao’s father was, for a while, a Silicon Valley hots A plastic bag washes up on a beach, it contains a Hello Kitty lunchbox and inside are some letters, a diary and a watch. The beach is on an island off the coast of British Columbia and the bag is found by Ruth, a local writer (it’s funny how so many novels feature writers). Ruth discovers that the diary is written by a girl named Nao and it tells the story of her life in America and then in Japan. It’s a somewhat harrowing tale. In California, Nao’s father was, for a while, a Silicon Valley hotshot, but things went wrong and the family moved back to their native Japan. Life continued to go downhill from this point.

Did the appearance of the bag on the beach somehow link to the tsunami that had hit the Japanese coast some months before? Had these items been washed onto the beach as a result of tidal flows? As Ruth talks to neighbours about her discovery and seeks answers to these questions, she also enlists their help to translate of some of the material she’s found. In time, we start to see the story of Nao and her family unfold. We also discover that Ruth is, herself, a Japanese-American. Married to Oliver – an artist and a naturalist – she is still adapting to life in this remote and quiet place after having previously lived in Manhattan. And there are other key characters in this narrative: Nao’s great grandmother, Old Jiko, and Haruki #1, a kamikaze pilot who, it transpires, was the original owner of the watch. In fact, as I worked my way through this book I began to find the stories of this pair ever more enticing – more so than those of Nao and Ruth, in fact.

It’s fairly slow going from the start, and never really speeds up. This is really a book to provoke contemplation and introspection. Whilst there is an ongoing tension regarding what will eventually come to pass regarding Nao and her family, much of the focus is on Ruth and Oliver. There are some pretty deep scientific discussions on subjects involving ecology, geology, meteorology, marine biology and (rather strangely) quantum mechanics. Whilst the wider story picks up themes such as Japanese culture, suicide, superstition, ghosts and the supernatural. Yes, there’s a lot going on here.

Ultimately, it is a satisfying story. Loose ends are tied off pretty well without the whole thing coming to a predictable and too neatly played out conclusion. The tensions between the various players is well conceived and executed and, though I found it hard to warm to Ruth, the tale of Haruki #1, in particular, will live long in the memory. ...more

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Oct 14, 2017 Diane rated it really liked it

Shelves: japan, audiobooks, brunch-club, modern-fiction

What a fascinating novel this was! I enjoyed the alternate timelines and the two female narrators, Nao and Ruth. Nao is in Japan and is writing in her journal, and Ruth later finds the journal and reads it, without knowing what happened to Nao. It's an intriguing and emotional story, and it made for a good book club discussion. Recommended!

Favorite Quotes
"Life is fleeting. Don't waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now! And now! And now!"

"Print is predictable and impersonal, conv What a fascinating novel this was! I enjoyed the alternate timelines and the two female narrators, Nao and Ruth. Nao is in Japan and is writing in her journal, and Ruth later finds the journal and reads it, without knowing what happened to Nao. It's an intriguing and emotional story, and it made for a good book club discussion. Recommended!

Favorite Quotes
"Life is fleeting. Don't waste a single moment of your precious life. Wake up now! And now! And now!"

"Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader’s eye. Handwriting, by contrast, resists the eye, reveals its meaning slowly, and is as intimate as skin."

"That's what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can't ever get it back."

"Do all kids have to worry about their parents’ mental health? The way society is set up, parents are supposed to be the grown-up ones and look after the kids, but a lot of times it’s the other way around."

"It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit. And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages that nobody has time to read because they’re all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke my heart."

"Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world."

"An unfinished book. left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will and ruthless determination to tame it again." ...more

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May 29, 2013 Aaron T. rated it it was ok

What a mess. I mean, a mess. There's so much excessive writing here, I was astounded at the sheer lack of editing and pruning--which this read needs a lot of.

That was the first that annoyed me. Details that are so stupid and repetitive, meaningless fodder that is in the way of getting on with a story.

I was astounded at how there was no real story here. A lot of good writing, albeit excessive, that goes nowhere.

A good 200 pages could have been excised, and maybe there would be
something worth rea ...more

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Feb 02, 2015 Book Riot Community added it

Shelves: literary-fiction

Painful Honesty Time: I begged for this book based on the cover. A friend laid out a bunch of books on her bed and snapped a photo and I knew I had to borrow it the minute I saw it. It was like looking at a roll of LifeSavers perfectly welded together under the sun, but with art in every stripe.

It was also an excellent read. Imaginative, funny, soulful, creative. The novel switches between the perspectives of two characters: sixteen-year-old Nao and Ruth, a struggling novelist. Through both char ...more

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Dec 06, 2017 Margitte rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-author, reviewed, 2013-releases, fiction, family-sagas, history, 2017-read, american-history, japan

This is a complex book, combining autobiography with fantasy, history and fiction.

Ruth Ozeki is the protagonist and the tale starts where she finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox which contained a faded-red English diary, a bundle of handwritten Japanese letters and a wrist watch of a sixteen year old girl in a plastic bag on Jap Ranch beach in the Desolation Sound near British Columbia.

Actually, the cover of the book was that of À La Cherche Du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust. To Ruth's utter shock and ...more

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Dec 12, 2013 jo rated it it was amazing

Shelves: blew-my-mind, asian-american, canada, war, east-south-east-asia

this book is about suicide. it says so in the first couple of pages so i'm not giving anything away. i know a lot about suicide. i am not an anti-suicide person. if someone feels it's their time to go; if they feel the pain is too much; if they have suffered long and terribly and see no end in sight, i say, goodbye my friend. in my modest personal experience, these people, the people with so much damage in them they find life a terrible ordeal day after fucking day tend to die early-ish anyway. ...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Wan rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2013-reads, 2013-releases, contemporary, tw-abuse, adult

Here are a few trigger warning topics to be aware of in this book (stop reading if you don't want to know):

-Bullying/Hazing
-Suicide
-Depression
-Attempted Rape
-Child Prostitution

Yes, all of that crammed into 432 pages. Here's the thing- I don't mind reading about characters going through abuse. It exists and we shouldn't ignore it. But when there's no plot advancing and it's just chapter after chapter about someone getting abused? It gets taxing. It's as if the author went, Hmm how am I going to t ...more

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May 07, 2013 Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: person-of-reality, 5-star, r-2014, books-are-the-best-invention, 21st-c-proposed, reality-check, reviewed, antidote-think-twice-all, antidote-think-twice-read, 1-read-on-hand

If a train that travels 3 kilometers per minute goes y kilometers in x minutes, then…etc., my mind would go numb and all I could think about was how a body would look at the moment of impact, and the distance a head might be thrown on the tracks, and how far the blood would spatter.

Listen up. The world doesn't live on humanity.

Japan isn’t a great thing to be a free anything, because free just means all alone and out of it.

Listen up. The world doesn't give a fuck about you.

"To a writer

If a train that travels 3 kilometers per minute goes y kilometers in x minutes, then…etc., my mind would go numb and all I could think about was how a body would look at the moment of impact, and the distance a head might be thrown on the tracks, and how far the blood would spatter.

Listen up. The world doesn't live on humanity.

Japan isn’t a great thing to be a free anything, because free just means all alone and out of it.

Listen up. The world doesn't give a fuck about you.

"To a writer, this is so funny. To send a word, instead of a body!

Listen up. The world runs on ciphers. The world runs on manipulating the data of inheritance and habitus into the machine of freedom, the end-all exchange of your life for your money, your morals for your bread, your peace for your survival. Heritage lives on in you in fear of the future, and the future is vast and pitiful, for everyone knows which heritages are worth most in the long run. Everyone learns early on that an income is only guaranteed by how quickly one may transcribe the weight of a human life into a point, the point into statistics, the statistics into a graph, ending with an overheard conversation of mine where one white male engineer told another white male engineer that he had it all wrong, the car wasn't screwed up just because three people died in accidents caused by the same flaw, you didn't need to pull back production and pay out the gains and suffer a loss for a paltry number of fatalities that didn't even amount to a standard deviation on the scale of sales over time. I should know, he said. I've been working for thirty years.

But later on, maybe days or months or even years later, the reality of what they’d done would start to rise up to the surface, and they would be twisted up with pain and anger and take it out on themselves and their families. That also would be my fault.

I quit bioengineering because I could do it. Understand? I quit bioengineering because my options were making a shitton of money at one company with military contracts or making a shitton of money at another company with a history of poisoning the environment or making a shitton of money at yet another powered by people preferring to amputate their selves through drugs in order to fit, to stay in, to save lives in order of those who could afford it rather than in an effort to give to those who need it. I quit bioengineering because it got to me, and I could go back if I medicated myself into a walking coma of math and pseudoethics and a rhetoric that never ever ever incorporated empathy in its millenias of history, but I won't. I won't, I won't, I won't.

"Now, who did you say we are at war with?”

Good question. At this very, very moment, this instant of time, this time of being, do you know whose time is ending? Here in the US, I certainly don't, not with the school to prison pipeline instate and the colonialism out, and with capitalism doing fine and dandy among the corporations and the drones and the taxes, I'd have a hell of a time finding out. If you look between the lines and past the whitewashing in schools from coast to coast, they'll teach you awareness of the fuel this democracy runs on, this country that grew physically through the genocide of one wealth of nations and financially through the enslavement of another, but they won't tell you what to do with it. They won't give you any sign that you are expected, as an adult, as a full fledged human being, as an upstanding member of society, to actively question this betrayal of freedom, of dignity, of the pursuit of happiness, which every fiber and action of your relative being. No. They see that you pay, they see that you receive your little paper, and they see that you leave with minimum fuss, for universities have a reputation and sales record to maintain, didn't you know, and anyone who falls between the cracks of attempted suicide, rape culture, and hate crimes just isn't good for press release.

Jiko looked out across the ocean to where the water met the sky. "A wave is born from deep conditions of the ocean," she said. "A person is born from deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and rolls along like a wave, until it is time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave."

I found my function through literature. I did, I did, I did. I reconciled my need for economic support with my need for propagating social justice, my equation for living with my reason to be, my privileges that I have with the privileges that I don't, and I hold that it should be this way for everyone. However, I don't hold with the notion that everyone should do it my way. I don't hold with the term "slacktivism", for explicate to me, please, the exact parameters of your definition, the constitutional efficacy of your concept, the fucking point of poking those who operate through means other than marches on the capital in the eye, as if only certain breeds of solidarity were deemed valid in the eyes of the holier-than-thou. As if everyone were capable as you, social justice warrior, to take off work, to take off thinking, to take off living in the way they've found works best in order to fulfill your narrow notions of just what it means to be "effective" in the social arena. The ripples of the new generation operate on electromagnetic waves far less concrete and observable than your sit-in protests, and if even science can't observe and measure at the same time, how do you expect to?

Nothing made him happier than planting baby trees.

It is a matter of not hurting people.
Slowly she turned herself around, pivoting on her knees, until finally she was facing me. “I asked for you,” she said.
“For me?”
“So you could hear the answer.”
It is a matter of listening to people.
"No," he said. "I'm not dead yet.”
It is a matter of living. It is a matter of learning without expecting instantaneous results. It is a matter of time being and respecting that time being for any and all systems both human and ecological, animal and psychological. It is a matter of knowing the difference between being dead and being alive, for dead is dead is dead unless, of course, you've passed something along. You've programmed a tool for activists, you've written a book for thinkers and believers in peace, you've expressed an idea of war never being acceptable under any circumstance so long as the life of a single being has value to someone via speech, via post, via like. Do not tell me that certain efforts to advocate something that values well being over profit do not "count"; if a successful career in bioengineering can't tempt me into treating deaths as justifiable statistical error, neither can you. ...more

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Nov 01, 2017 Mariah Roze rated it it was amazing

Shelves: diversity-in-all-forms-book-club

I read this for the Goodreads' Book Club Diversity in All Forms! If you would like to join the discussion here is the link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I would rate this book 4.5 stars, because at the end it seemed really fictional. But the rest was really enjoyable. I lived in Japan for the summer of 2014 and my best friend there was named Nao, just like the main character in this book. This book brought back some really great and painful memories, so I appreciated the at a huge lev ...more

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Sep 10, 2014 Idarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

"In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth."

Can I just say (Of course you can. Who's stopping you?) that this book blew my mind! I have that ridiculous Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures e
"In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth."

Can I just say (Of course you can. Who's stopping you?) that this book blew my mind! I have that ridiculous Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures expression on my face. Did I just travel through time and back in the weeks it took me to finish this book? Way!

Like a Matryoshka doll, Ozeki slowly unravels tale after tale in a mysterious and magical way. After a diary and letters wash up on the Canadian island where Ruth and her husband Oliver live, they begin piecing together a series of intertwined lives and narratives from the diary, and its 16-year-old Japanese author, Naoko. Although a work of fiction, I liked that Ruth and her husband live seemingly identical lives to the author, Ozeki; this gives the book an almost autobiographical feel to it.

There's not too much more I can say without giving away any of the plot, but just trust that you will be in for a real, unpredictable ride. I felt like I was reading a Murakami book and watching Cosmos and an after school special all at the same time! Ozeki is a genius, and although there were quite a few scientific concepts about time and physics that were a bit over my head, I felt like she held my hand all the way through it, going to the extent of including kind little appendices. She's so sweet!

I had tried reading this book on several occasions, but was never really at a place where I could dedicate the time and attention it required. I am so glad I didn't force myself to get through it at that point! It was a wonderful book, and I empathized with Ruth when she read the final page of the diary.

"She turned the final page. The words continued, she read them to the end, and then at the bottom of the page, they stopped. There was no doubt about it. There were no more words and no more pages. Books end. Why was she surprised?"
...more

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Mar 04, 2014 Iris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, favorites, own

I'm spellbound by this book. It's so thought provoking and the writing is so lyrical and melancholic. The ideas in this book will stay with me for a long time. One of my favourites, definitely! ...more

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Apr 03, 2015 Vonia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: world-war-ii, propriety, isolated-setting, unexpectedly-funny, buddhism, suicide, religion, small-town-lives, dreams, poetry

I loved this books for so many different reasons.

The Japanese Culture, from their traditions to their philosophies on life to family values to folklore to deep familial traditions has always intrigued me. Psychology; a young suicidal girl's tenacity to tell the story of the grandmother she loves. Time, space, relativity with quantum physics. Buddhism philosophies to live life for the moment (Because, "... memories are time beings... for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die."). ...more

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Jul 28, 2013 Sue rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, read-2015, favorites, japan, kindle, buddhism

I've just finished reading and really enjoyed this book with all of it's complexities. I enjoyed entering Ruth/Nao's world/worlds with all the speculation that entails. I am also drawn to much in Buddhist thought, though I really know little in that area, so the inclusion of so much Zen Buddhist thought is another plus for me.

In the basic story line, a plastic bag washes up on the shore of an island off British Columbia. In it, Ruth, an author, finds, among other things, a diary written by a Jap ...more

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Jan 02, 2014 Cheri rated it it was amazing

Shelves: cultural-japan, literary-fiction, favourites, read-in-2014

Sixteen-year-old Nao has endured the bullying of her schoolmates for years, but when one teacher joins in, the bullying escalates even more. She has no real friends since moving to Tokyo after growing up in Sunnyvale, California, and life in Tokyo bears no resemblance to her happy childhood. Her father is unable to regain the success in employment he had in Sunnyvale, prior to the dot.com bust, along with the associated financial benefits. After his unsuccessful suicide attempt his relationship ...more

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About Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki

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Ruth Ozeki (born in New Haven, Connecticut) is a Japanese American novelist. She is the daughter of anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury.

Ozeki published her debut novel, My Year of Meats, in 1998. She followed up with All Over Creation in 2003. Her new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, was published on March 12, 2013.

She is married to Canadian land artist Oliver Kellhammer, and the couple divides their ...more

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“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.” — 270 likes

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