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londonbookworm_ 's review for:
The Book of Form and Emptiness
by Ruth Ozeki
Next stop on the Women’s Prize shortlist, this Ruth Ozeki. A sad, affecting story of mental health and the difficult home life of a young boy, Benny. I was emotionally invested in parts of this, but mostly felt it was too long, there were too many themes stitched together.
The voices Benny starts hearing soon after the death of his father form the crux of the novel. From scissors to windows to teapots he hears the voices of inanimate objects everywhere. At times the voices chide him, others they tell him their story, with little consistency (but I suppose this showed the nonlinear nature of mental health disorders).
When the voice of ‘the book’ begins speaking to Benny as if writing the book you are reading the whole thing got a little messy for me. I can see why prize judges loved this—a profound, meta element that left you with the question “does an author find a book or does a book find the author?” But the personified novel got a little far-fetched and I found the conversations between the book and Benny pretty repetitive.
The other characters were fascinating in their uniqueness. They built a world of poverty, discomfort, abandonment; the people shunned from society without the tools for help. Benny’s mother, Annabell, struggles to let go, turning her home into a hoarder’s junkyard, visited by crows that she feeds in a weird, unsettling side-story.
When The Aleph and Bottleman became Benny’s friends the story got even weirder. I liked that Ozeki cast characters on the outskirts of society, but Bottleman’s smelly homeless bags full of old bottles, his alcoholism, the pet ferret—it was all just a bit gross for me. I wasn’t even sure if they were real, or figments of Benny’s imagination? That may have been the point…?
I have a pet peeve for writers who spell out how characters are feeling, and the emails between Annabelle and the Marie Kondo-esq tidying expert felt like a lazy way of expressing her learnings. I'm also not sure she nailed the voice of a teen boy, so I wasn’t totally sold on the prose.
A mixed book of books within books within stories about stories. Confusing or genius, I’m not sure.
The voices Benny starts hearing soon after the death of his father form the crux of the novel. From scissors to windows to teapots he hears the voices of inanimate objects everywhere. At times the voices chide him, others they tell him their story, with little consistency (but I suppose this showed the nonlinear nature of mental health disorders).
When the voice of ‘the book’ begins speaking to Benny as if writing the book you are reading the whole thing got a little messy for me. I can see why prize judges loved this—a profound, meta element that left you with the question “does an author find a book or does a book find the author?” But the personified novel got a little far-fetched and I found the conversations between the book and Benny pretty repetitive.
The other characters were fascinating in their uniqueness. They built a world of poverty, discomfort, abandonment; the people shunned from society without the tools for help. Benny’s mother, Annabell, struggles to let go, turning her home into a hoarder’s junkyard, visited by crows that she feeds in a weird, unsettling side-story.
When The Aleph and Bottleman became Benny’s friends the story got even weirder. I liked that Ozeki cast characters on the outskirts of society, but Bottleman’s smelly homeless bags full of old bottles, his alcoholism, the pet ferret—it was all just a bit gross for me. I wasn’t even sure if they were real, or figments of Benny’s imagination? That may have been the point…?
I have a pet peeve for writers who spell out how characters are feeling, and the emails between Annabelle and the Marie Kondo-esq tidying expert felt like a lazy way of expressing her learnings. I'm also not sure she nailed the voice of a teen boy, so I wasn’t totally sold on the prose.
A mixed book of books within books within stories about stories. Confusing or genius, I’m not sure.