tastor 's review for:

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

4.0

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Really great book about books and other objects and how they fit into our lives. Kind of has a magic realism thing going where it uses the Zen concept of all things having voices and then runs with it, allowing the main character to hear the voices (which, because they come from everything end up severely messing with his life) and eventually hears the "voice" of his own book, the very one we are reading that is about him. This leads to all sorts of meta-territory, including the idea of stories that seem like they are going to go in these obvious satisfying narratives which instead take different "realistic" turns. I did think some of it dragged a bit and we could have gotten some more exploration of certain aspects but all in all it builds to a satisfying (if a little sad) conclusion.