Reviews

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

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rey_reads's review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective relaxing 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

4.75

i loved so much of this book. Nao was such a great character with a really distinctive narrative voice. i am both impressed by & appreciative of Ozeki’s ability to cover so many difficult themes so thoughtfully and sensitively whilst maintaining an engaging narrative and realistic characters. and it was funny! which is difficult for a book so heavily centred on suicide and war. the incorporation of a zen buddhist perspective and the running theme of time were personal highlights.
it began to loose me toward the end of the book and honestly i was neither expecting nor entirely satisfied with the final Ruth chapters

especially the quantum stuff & the breakdown of reader/ writer - i think i would’ve enjoyed the book more had the final chapters never gone there, just because before that all discussion of time & emotion felt so realistic that this kind of left me feeling let down.

still, i’ll be thinking about Nao and Jiko for a long time.

Content Warnings

harrisonarachel's review against another edition

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5.0

Really loved this book. Had so many different elements to it, and even though it didn't end in a completely understandable way, I was left feeling happy having read it.
It taught me a lot about life in a different country, from a younger perspective, and also showed me a way of like in Japan that was very different to how I perceived it.
I have always loved reading books that have a diary feel to them, as they make it so much more personal and as if you now have a secret between each other, being a diary writer myself must be the reason behind why I enjoy it so much.

The difference between the 2 writers (we follow 2 different people) flowed really well, there were moments when I did just want to skip ahead because I was left on a cliff-hanger, but I was glad I didn't and stuck to the story.

I loved having an insight into older Japanese traditions too. Jiko the Japanese nun was such an interesting character, it made me want to learn more about how they lived, practicing zen and not caring about the small menial things.

This book has made a good influence on my life to be honest, and was one of those books that once I started I had to finish.

10/10

janetval's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful reflective sad

4.0

sidharthvardhan's review against another edition

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4.0

"And if you decide not to read anymore, hey, no problem, because you're not the one I was waiting for anyway. But if you decide to read on, then guess what? You're my kind of time being and together we'll make magic!"

‘A Tale of Time Being’ is about a teenage girl, Nao who is going through a lot of suffering –in fact so much suffering that at times you doubt whether the author has gone too far to make her suffer. Nao’s story is being told through her diary which she wants someone to read, and this diary is final discovered and read by Ruth (the author herself).

The story touches a lot of themes including:

1. concept of time being, Zen philosophies (both of which, most of us won’t get completely but whatever you do understand you shall love),

2. Schrödinger’s cat, Quantum physics (we have a lot of those these days. This one could do better without them.)

3. Dōgen’s philosophy (who never impressed me),

4. suicide

5. and relationship which reader develops with a story, among others.

To put it in simply, it is a sort of book where understanding is not same as reading. It could do with a bit of editing in initially chapter relating about Ruth. The last chapter looked like redundant to me – but on the whole it is a beautiful package. Ruth had a point about what she said about September 11. There are some very beautiful passages, writing is innovative, some issues are raised which is nicely done but whats most beautiful is some of most beautiful writing. The poem Nao's grandmother writes towards the end is really moving.

Here, for example, is a paragraph written by Nao in her diary, showing how she is dying to have a conversation:

“Oh well. That’s what’s going on in my world. How about in yours? You doing okay?
I don’t know why I keep asking you questions. It’s not like I expect you to answer, and even if you did answer, how would I know? But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe when I ask you a question like “You doing okay?” you should just tell me, even if I can’t hear you, and then I’ll just sit here and imagine what you might say.
You might say, “Sure thing, Nao. I’m okay. I’m doin’ just fine.”
“Okay, awesome,” I would say to you, and then we would smile at each other across time like we were friends, because we are friends by now, aren’t we?

bhnmt61's review against another edition

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5.0

I loved this book, but I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone. The parallel stories of two people run through it-- Nao, a Japanese teenager who moves back to Japan with her family when her father loses his job in America, and Ruth, a writer who lives on an island off the west coast of Canada. Ruth finds a diary wrapped in a plastic bag inside a lunch box on the beach near her home. The diary was written by Nao in Japan. (how did it get there? when did she write it?)

At first, the story is just interesting: Nao is an engaging writer and her story is absorbing, so it's easy to understand how Ruth becomes mesmerized by the diary. But then the story takes some darker turns as Nao has to deal with the cruelty of students at her new school (trigger warning: it's far worse than typical bullying, which is bad enough) and her father's depression and suicide attempts. Toward the end, the story takes another sharp turn into quasi-mysticism. If you can suspend disbelief and just go with the flow, it's a deeply rich, rewarding story. But it's right on the edge of being too much, so I can understand that some readers wouldn't like it. And honestly, I could have done without the awkward attempt in the final pages to explain the physics of what happened, but it wasn't enough to ruin the story for me. Loved it, highly recommended.