A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki [Book Review] #20booksofsummer
If you’d asked me a few weeks ago whether I’d be likely to enjoy a novel about everything from Zen and the meaning of time to the Japanese tsunami and environmental degradation, I’d probably have said no way. But not only did I enjoy A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki it’s turned out to be one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.
This is a novel that addresses big themes that transcend cultures and borders yet it starts at the level of one individual. In a Tokyo cafe where waitresses dress up as French maids, 16 year old Nao (pronounced as “now”) Yasutani pours out her thoughts into a diary. Her journal is an attempt to deal with the severe loneliness and feelings of alienation she has experienced since her father lost his lucrative hi-tech job in Silicon Valley, California and the family had to move back to Japan. They live in a one bed room apartment; her mother sits for hours in front of a tank of jellyfish at the aquarium, her father, unable to get a job, has attempted suicide. Nao has been bullied, ostracised and humiliated at school and is herself contemplating suicide. But first she will write the life story of her 104-year-old grandmother Jiko, a nun who lives in a remote Buddhist temple in north-eastern Japan.
More than a decade later, the diary, wrapped in a Hello Kitty lunchbox and freezer bags covered in barnacles, is washed ashore on an island in British Columbia where it’s discovered by Ruth, an author. As she reads the Nao’s words Ruth becomes sucked into the mystery of the girl’s life. How has the diary wound up here on the other side of the world? Did it float across the Pacific on one of the huge gyres of waste she learns about from her husband Oliver? How long had the package been tossed about in the sea? What happened to Nao – did she kill herself or was she a victim of the tsunami in 2011? Can Ruth find and save her? Questions that compel Ruth to frantically hunt the Internet, seek insight from local marine experts and help with translation. Each time she thinks she is making progress, she hits another dead end.
The novel oscillates between first person excerpts from Nao’s diary and third person narration in which Ruth reacts to the diary and the other documents. New layers of story emerge and new connections are made. In the lunchbox, Ruth discovers letters from Jiko’s son, Haruki, a young man forced to give up his studies and become a kamikaze pilot during the last days of the Second World War. In the letters, written in French so his commanding officers cannot understand them, he reveals his fears about the task he has been ordered to undertake. The package also contains Haruki’s watch which miraculously still keeps time.
Time of course is one of the threads that holds the novel together. The slippery nature of time is one of Nao’s preoccupations. She calls herself a “time being. … someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and everyone of us who is, or was, or ever will be.” She captures her thoughts about her “last days on Earth” in a diary bound within the covers of an old copy of Proust’s A la Recherché du Temps Perdu. As she recounts her past, she wonders not only who will read her story, but also when she will catch up to her present and what catching up will feel like. At the same time, she seems to believe that “now” is an impossibility because it keeps disappearing:
In the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It’s already then. Then is the opposite of now. So saying now obliterates its meaning, turning it into exactly what it isn’t. It’s like the word is committing suicide or something.
She invites her imagined reader to count the moments of the now with her. Across the years and across the ocean Ruth tries to keep in time with Nao, forcing herself to slow down the pace at which she reads the journal. Reading it at the same pace at which Nao wrote it, will she reasons, enable her to “more closely replicate Nao’s experience.” It’s left to Ruth’s husband Oliver to provide a logical explanation for the conflation of past and present she experiences, using the experiment known as Schrödinger’s cat as evidence that an object (or Nao herself) may be simultaneously both alive and dead.
Philosophical explorations of quantum mechanics, discussions about crow species and the anatomy of barnacles populate A Tale for the Time Being. It’s a dizzying array of ideas which sometimes threaten to overwhelm the reader (especially if you also pay attention to the 163 footnotes and six appendices). What holds it all together is Nao’s voice. She’s a direct and engaging narrator, holding little back in her account of her fears for her father and the despair when a disturbing film about her goes viral through social media. What saves her is her relationship with her grandmother. During a summer holiday at the temple Nao learns how to control her anger, empty her mind and express gratitude for the simplest things in life. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for this girl in her pain and her desire for love.
If you want a novel that deals with both the big and the small issues, A Tale for the Time Being ticks all the boxes. It’s quite mesmerising in scope but at the heart of it is a young girl reaching out across time and space for help.
Footnotes
About the Book: A Tale for the Time Being is Ozeki’s third novel. It was longlisted for the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Award and shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize.
About the Author: A native of Connecticut, Ruth Ozeki immersed herself in English and Asian Studies college and through extensive travel in Asia. After working in cinematic set design and television production, she became an independent filmmaker. Ozeki’s two earlier novels, My Year of Meats and All Over Creation, were both recognized as Notable Books by The New York Times. An ordained Zen Buddhist priest, Ozeki divides her time between New York and British Columbia. There are numerous parallels between the author and the character of Ruth in A Tale for the Time Being – aside from sharing a name, they are each married to a man called Oliver, have a mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s, a moody cat and have a house on an island in Desolation Sound.
Why I read this book: I heard about this book when it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was considered to be a strong contender (though some reviewers said they felt the section set in British Columbia was weaker than the Tokyo sections). I never got around to reading it but then found a copy in a library sale. It’s one of the books on my 20booksofsummer reading list.
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I nearly bought this when I was in Seattle last month – because I love things Japanese, and I love Victoria (and Puget Sound). But in the end I thought of the TBR and decided to be sensible. The topic sounds good too. One day, perhaps.
there are always more books I want to read than I possibly can fit into one life time so sometimes things just have to by-passed
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Just requested this from my library. Thanks for the review!
Hope you enjoy the experience when you get to read it
I enjoyed “All Over Creation”, and this one sounds equally compelling. Woe to my TBR!
Go on I’m sure you can squeeze in one more book on those shelves
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I liked this book, but I’d agree that the British Columbia section was quite weak. I also felt that too many concepts were packed into it. Alas! I felt at times that I wasn’t quite intelligent enough to process many of the themes in the book.
I found I could read it at a level to suit my intelligence level – so I got a basic understanding of the cat experiment even if I didnt get it fully and certainly wouldnt want to sit an exam in it
why have I waited for so long to read it? thanks for encouraging me
I had the same question….
I really like the sound of this one. I might have to check it out 😀
This is a book that you could read on different levels – I enjoyed the footnotes which explain the composition of some of the Japanese words. Other people might appreciate the ecology part or the Zen philosophy….
Great review! And this sounds absolutely fascinating. I probably wouldn’t have paid it much attention, but it does sound like one I might enjoy.
It has plenty in it to grab your attention Karen. it could easily have become a bit of a schmaltzy novel but she carefully controlled that. The character of Nao’s grandmother is superb
I hadn’t much fancied the sound of this book but you make it sound really appealing. Lovely review. I can certainly imagine reading this now.
I started it last year but clearly wasn’t in the right mood for it so put it aside. So glad I came back to it.
Loved this and so glad you did too!
it was a surprise I enjoyed it so much
So many of my other blogger friends have been writing that they only like Nao’s timeline, and that even that didn’t get interesting until she met with her grandmother. You’re the first reviewer I’ve encountered who has reviewed it positively! It may be that the book (from the way you describe it) is a bit slower than what so many thriller fans today are looking for.
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Check out this review of the book, A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, as featured on the Booker Talk blog.
This is one of my favourite books of the last five years. I’m going to have to reread it before too long.
This is easily a book that will take re-reading.I was planning to give my copy away so I can create space in the bookshelves but now I’m not so sure
Cracking review Karen! I was so impressed by the scope and ambition of this book, and I think you’re right, the voice of Nao is so powerfully realised that, remarkably, it manages to hold everything together. I loved all the sections, but the part set in the monastery was so vividly evoked and so blissfully calm that it prompted me to start meditating again! I must make a note to check out her other books.
I’ve been trying that meditation practice as a way of dealing with restless nights and it works! What a wonderful woman the grandmother is and the relationship is so beautifully evoked in the image of the three of them in the tub together
I loves My Year of Meat but somehow haven’t got around to this one. It sounds very ambitious.
It certainly is ambitious in scope but it’s also very human – the big ideas don’t overwhelm the human drama
I adored this book; I read it along with my husband and it was a stand-out book for both of us. I liked the Japan and Canada sections equally and couldn’t put it down. We also enjoyed both of her previous books and they’re worth picking up if you come across them, too.
I’m tempted now indeed to go and find her previous work – good to know they were enjoyable too
I’m glad you liked this. I bought it after I heard the author talk at a festival, but subsequently read a couple of reviews that weren’t very enthusiastic. But it’s all about whose reviews we trust, eh?
There were a few reviews I read which said she had tried to pack too much in so the novel lacked clarity. That wasn’t my experience though.Then I saw others which said the Canadian side of the story was weak – I’d agree it didnt have the pull of the Japan part of the narrative but I wouldnt say it was weak. So yes, you have to take some of the criticisms with a pinch of salt …