Book 9: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Book 9: A Tale for the Time Being .
Author: Ruth Ozeki, 2013.
Genre: Contemporary. Magical Realism. Literary. Japanese Culture. Ecology. Metafiction.
Other Details: Paperback. 422 pages.
'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.' - Nao, A Tale for the Time Being.
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 first 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 ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artefacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunch box -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. - synopsis from author's website.
I found this an incredible reading experience; a novel rich in ideas about history and culture, science and ecology, religion, philosophy and the nature of reality. Once started I quickly appreciated why it was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2013. It is moving, profound and heart-warming with a sprinkling of subtle humour. Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time features in the plot and having recently read Proust's masterpiece I was able to appreciate how his musings about time informed this novel.
The narrative voice moves between Nao's diary entries and other of the found artefacts and Ruth, a writer living with her husband Oliver on an island off the coast of British Columbia. Ruth Ozeki describes Ruth in the novel as a metaphorical version of herself, sharing her Japanese-American heritage and other aspects of her real life but with less awareness of Zen Buddhism. In another interview she describes the novel as a "fictional memoir".
There is a great deal of Zen Buddhist philosophy and practice in the novel, which is presented in a very accessible way. Reading the novel woke my youthful fascination with Zen Buddhism. There are also ecological themes in the novel, another big draw for me.
It is a novel that I would hope to revisit again and will suggest it as a reading group choice in 2014. I would recommend it to anyone interested in ideas and about the interconnectedness of all things.The novel contains a number of appendixes on various topics, a bibliography and translation footnotes sprinkled through the text.
Cross-posted to 50bookchallenge.