A Tale for the Time Being
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3.8 • 58 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
In the wake of the 2011 tsunami, Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home in British Columbia. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes, heartbreak and dreams of a young girl desperate for someone to understand her. Each turn of the page pulls Ruth deeper into the mystery of Nao’s life, and forever changes her in a way neither could foresee.
Weaving across continents and decades, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A Japanese teenager named Nao sits in a Tokyo cafe writing in her journal about the merciless teasing she endures at school, her nuclear family’s spectacular unravelling—and the life story of her 104-year-old grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s her only ally. While out for a stroll, Ruth, a novelist living on an isolated island off Canada’s British Columbia coast, stumbles across a barnacle-encrusted bag containing a Hello Kitty lunchbox—and Nao’s diary. Ruth Ozeki, the fantastically creative author of My Year of Meats, has penned another alluring, intelligent novel constructed with the wondrous precision of wooden nesting dolls. Alternating between the voices of two women who are from very different worlds—but share a deep loneliness and intellectual longing—A Tale for the Time Being is a spellbinding story about the anguish of losing the things that matter most and the comfort of human connection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ozeki's absorbing third novel (after All Over Creation) is an extended meditation on writing, time, and people in time: "time beings." Nao Yasutani is a Japanese schoolgirl who plans to "drop out of time" to kill herself as a way of escaping her dreary life. First, though, she intends to write in her diary the life story of her great-grandmother Jiko, a Zen Buddhist nun. But Nao actually ends up writing her own life story, and the diary eventually washes up on the shore of Canada's Vancouver Island, where a novelist called Ruth lives. Ruth finds the diary in a freezer bag with some old letters in French and a vintage watch. Ruth's investigation into how the bag traveled from Japan to her island, and why it contains what it does, alternates with Nao's chapters. The characters' lives are finely drawn, from Ruth's rustic lifestyle to the Yasutani family's straitened existence after moving from Sunnyvale, Calif., to Tokyo. Nao's winsome voice contrasts with Ruth's intellectual ponderings to make up a lyrical disquisition on writing's power to transcend time and place. This tale from Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist priest, is sure to please anyone who values a good story broadened with intellectual vigor.
Customer Reviews
A tale for the time being
A very clever book. Troubling, even disturbing at times. Despite at times feeling highly uncomfortable about the issues and concepts being dealt with, I found myself gripped by this novel. This is not light reading by any means and I wouldn't say I enjoyed it in the conventional sense, however, I couldn't put it down as I was intrigued by the ideas that it put forward woven into the very structure of the book itself.
A Tale For the Time Being
Loved this book. The best of the Booker short list. It is tremendously readable, taking you on a fascinating journey which leads you into culture differences, geological understanding,Buddhism, meditation, Tsunami tragedy etc. I found myself not wanting to finish it. When I did, I found it resonated with me for some considerable time.