Reviews tagging 'Grief'

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

43 reviews

aposthuma's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book left me with a LOT of thoughts. I think I'm rating it 3.5 stars. I didn't care much about Ruth's POV and thought it was pretty slow, but Nao's parts were incredibly thought-provoking, bringing up themes like time, mortality, and permanence. Fair warning, this book is DARK. Far darker than i went in expecting

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

veronica0mcdougall's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

rainbowesque's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

It didn't reach 5 star for me only because the ending eluded me. I couldn't fully understand exactly where the author wanted to go. I was kind of feeling more- more of what? I don't know. Otherwise, the book made me feel a lot of feelings. Althoug  it took me one month to read, I never felt bored or on the days when I didn't touch the book, I hadn't felt like I forgot the story. It was rare for me. There is indeed some kind of 'urgency' (in Ruth's words) in the book that makes a reader keep wanting to read. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

recorderkfk's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Stretch book/ growth edge book for me - but a different mode of storytelling - 2 narratives 1) first person Japanese teenager who grew up in California. 2) third person limited omnipresent narrator of Ruth an author who lives with her husband on an island off of Washington. 

The book grows on you the more you read of it!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

valjeanval's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

One of the best books I've read in a long time. Theres's not one moment (or fingersnap of 65 moments) that hasn't been carefully thought through to create this beautiful exploration of time, entanglement, and a life (or a death) with meaning. The research that went into this book must have been incredible. Everything from the daily life of a Japanese high school student in Tokyo to neighborly mechanisms that keep a British Columbian island functionings to the realities of life as a WWII kamikaze pilot and the magical realism that is quantum mechanics. I care deeply for the characters. I feel like I've lived in the setting, and I savored the prose. I don't know what else you could ask for in a novel. It's my first Ruth Ozeki book, but definitely not my last.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

stormbringer52's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book is a really tough read and took me a long time to finish. However, it was worth it. It made me incredibly uncomfortable in some parts, but that was the point. Ruth Ozeki did a wonderful job of representing unsettling topics in a way that felt real and disturbing. I found myself nervous to turn the page at times, worried what would happen next.

Brief spoiler for the end, but
it didn't make a lot of sense to me. I liked it, but it did feel a little out of nowhere. Granted, there were slight magical elements throughout, like how things that Ruth saw online suddenly disappeared, or Naoko conversing with her deceased great uncle. I suppose the end of the book meant to sort of explain why things were happening, but it kind of lost me honestly.
However, I still thing the book was beautifully written, so this does not impact my opinion much :]

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

horationelson's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

roseblossom999's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

elmei's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This would be such a good book club book to discuss because honestly I’m too dumb on my own to process the depth of it all. You can tell there was a lot of thought put into the writing with plenty of layers, symbolism, themes—to the point where after listening to the audiobook (which was recorded with the author’s voice — and she did a fantastic job), I need to buy a physical copy to go back and highlight or underline things to fully grasp it. It had an ambitious main theme tying back to the fundamentals of Zen Buddhism, which were sprinkled throughout the novel but not in an over the top obvious way, which is why I felt it so challenging. It is essentially a book divided into three perspectives: Nao, a funny yet suicidal 16 year old American-Japanese girl, Ruth self-inserted as herself, a middle-aged Japanese-American struggling writer feeling stagnant in a small rural Pacific Northwest town after living in NYC in her previous life, and (through his letters) Haruki #1,  Nao’s great uncle who was a former graduate student turned co-opted Kamikaze fighter during WWII. One interesting motif I did notice was the (very Japanese) utilization of double meaning behind words, and the concept of a double life: with Nao’s name, the most obvious being the ironic tie between her name and the English word “now.” Followed with Nao’s explanation of a “time-being” and the phrase “for the time being.” With the Buddhist notion of “non-self” tied in with the acts of selfless compassion that the characters perform juxtaposed with the prominent “selfish” suicidality of Nao and her father, both desiring to be “not have a self” anymore. With Ruth’s and Nao’s desire to go back to their previous lives in different places and times. With Nao’s parents putting on a show or “fake life” that refuses to acknowledge her father’s mental health issues to her. With Nao’s own double life and alienation from her parents, outside of the home that they are unaware of, nor can they even begin to fully understand. With Hiroki’s letters of which he has to keep 2 versions: a fake, politically acceptable version and the true version written to his mother. With Hiroki #1 and Hiroki #2 living with essentially opposite life experiences: one wanting to commit suicide and the other not. With the quantum magical realism explained at the end. Truely a cool and sensible story telling technique to convey Buddhist principles. While ultimately things may appear to be different, they are (as old Jiko says) the same, they are one. Nit picking some things: I didn’t really enjoy the information/magical realism dump at the end
which I think was attempted to be ameliorated by Ruth’s husband mansplaining facts at her throughout the duration of the Ruth plot line so it wouldn’t seem so out of place when it did come, which somewhat worked but I wish there was more of a similar sprinkling of the magic and/or quantum theory earlier on, or at least more than once, so it didn’t feel so overwhelming and we could digest it more.
While maybe not a crowd pleasing book with its exceptionally dark Nao and Hiroki storyline, and sometimes stagnant-feeling Ruth plot line—which I think is intentional and I personally did not mind—I found this book hopeful and thought provoking at least pending a deep dive later on, which makes its goal as a piece of literature more than worth the suffering it caused me. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

daretoread's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings