A Tale for the Time Being A Novel

Ruth Ozeki completely surprised me with this novel and you get so much more out of it than what can be glimpsed on the back of the book. The story is told from two interweaving perspectives which cross ways out of mere luck. Down at the shore of her home town, middle-aged author Ruth finds Nao's diary, which is carefully wrapped in a waterproof Hello Kitty lunchbox and must have travelled all the way from Japan. Even though Nao's diary is aimed to be a thorough memoir of her aunt's (Jiko) life, Ruth soon realizes that Nao intends to commit suicide once Jiko's life events have been told. As Nao adresses the reader of her diary with the pronoun "you", Ruth feels as if having an ongoing conversation with Nao. However, when Ruth decides to look for Nao and her aunt, things seem to get out of hand. While reading this novel, I was time and time again reminded of Haruki Murakami's works of fiction, the subtle blend between mundane present-day life and sudden magical realism. Even though I connected deeply with both narrators, I would also have loved to find out more about Jiko's youth and her transition from a feminist radical whose texts were censored and ultimately forbidden to a meek Buddhist nun. It is also helpful to know before reading that Nao suffers from awful incidents of bullying in school, which makes you feel for her even more but which also make some chapters very hard to digest.

This book really intrigued me, being very weird and deceptive. It's so easy to read but a liiiittle difficult to comprehend. This is a story within a story kind of book, Ruth reading Nao's diary, trying to slow down her pace while reading it (which is so contrary to what literally everyone would do). Nao's POV really engaged me, it touched me in so many ways and I really just loved reading her thoughts. Every time the POV switched to Ruth, I got instantly annoyed. It was just so dry and rational and seriously, it delivered no emotion whatsoever other than the fact, that I wanted to be dead inside. I'm pretty sure, it's still going to stay with me for the time being. I defintitely did not understand all of it (I may be a genius but I'm not omnipotent) but it's not unmemorable.