A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki – 3 Stars (Rounded up)

[Hannah]

This novel is told in two timeframes: Ruth is an author living in Canada shortly after the 2011 Japanese tsunami and Nao is a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl who writes a diary in the early 2000s. It is Nao’s diary that washes up on the beach in Canada following the tsunami, and this is the event that links the two timeframe. The timelines were not told in a linear way, and the book was constantly moving between the two stories, and the wide range of themes it covered made it very difficult to follow at times. I found Nao’s story about the bullying she was suffering, and both her and her father’s depression and suicide attempts very hard to read. This contrasted to the Ruth sections and dream sequences that seemed very trivial and jarring in comparison. Having read one boo by Ozeki, I’m not sure that I will be reading her other books any time soon.