A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki rounded up to 2 stars

[Karin]

Yes, this has been shelved classics 12 times! Weird, but true.

If you have a naughty list for people who don't like books that you loved and gave this 5 stars, then I am no doubt going to be on it if I am not already.

At first I was sure I'd like this book at at least 4 stars. Ozeki crafts her writing well. However, I didn't take a look at the top shelves, which would have told me to never pick this up. For one thing, it's been shelved magical realism over 700 times. That alone would have been a flag since I almost never like that. By the time I got to that part I was vested in seeing what would happen to Nao plus I was reading with a purpose.

Some of the stuff I didn't like is that Nao's story is all around her (and her father for the first two) suicide fixation, depression and bullying and on the island where Ruth lives it's all about the ruination of the planet. Not that these aren't serious topics, of course, but having been taught about pollution and the ruination of the planet from a young age (my dad managed to talk me out of walking everywhere I went when, at the age of 10, I vowed that that was what I was going to do, not to mention nightmares about nuclear war when I was a teen, etc) this is not what I am looking for when I read novels. How many times do I personally need to be told the same thing?

She uses her husband and herself as characters in this novel. I can see that this has merit, of course, but I didn't particularly care for it in this instance as it pulled me out of the novel at times.

That said, there were many familiar things since I grew up in the Georgia Strait area (Cortes Island is more north) and have been to Campbell River (but never heard it called that slang therm, having never been to Cortes Island or Quadra Island that I can remember--who knows where we went by boat when I was a baby and toddler?) Same with the flora and fauna. For those still reading this, the reason this oceanic island is too far inland to get much trash from the huge pan-Pacific water movement is because it is east of what I grew up calling the island, Vancouver Island. Plus it's up in a more crowded and narrow part of the strait.