A Tale for the Time Being: A Novel

How do a century-old modern-thinking Buddhist nun, a WW II kamikaze pilot, a bullied 16-year-old Japanese schoolgirl on the verge of suicide, her suicidal father, a struggling memoirist on a remote island of British Columbia, Time, Being, Proust, language, philosophy, global warming, and the 2011 Japanese tsunami connect? In this brilliantly plotted and absorbing, layered novel, one can find the theme in a quote from Proust, quoted by Ozeki: "In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self." Remember these poignant and piercing words, as it underpins all that this book is about. You can catch on immediately that it is self-referential, at least to some degree. The memoirist's name is Ruth (like the author)--both Ruths have a husband name Oliver and live on a remote island in British Colombia. And both are writers. The Ruth of the novel suffers from writer's block. She has been trying to write a book of her mother's last years living with Alzheimer's, and to illustrate her own feelings about her experience as daughter and caretaker. One day, Ruth finds some barnacle-encrusted belongings washed up ashore, possibly from the 2011 Japan tsunami and the tidal drifts that deposited debris in their direction. Inside is a Hello Kitty lunchbox, a wristwatch circa WWII, letters in Japanese, a French composition book, and a diary of a 16-year-old Japanese girl named Nao (pronounced "Now") written in English. The diary itself is set inside a hacked copy of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Proust's novel is removed, leaving the shell as a cover protecting Nao's secret journal. In the meantime, a native Japanese crow has inhabited the island where Ruth and Oliver live with their moody cat, eerily haunting the island with its ke ke ke song. According to the narrative, the ancient Zen master, Shōbōgenzō, stated, "Time itself is being...and all being is time...In essence, everything in the entire universe is intimately linked with each other as moments in time, continuous and separate." I was hooked by that time, and for the time...being. I know that, thus far, I have only quoted great historical thinkers and writers, whose words are enfolded in this shimmering tapestry of a book. However, be assured that Ozeki's contemporary narrative will both exhilarate and touch you. "I am reaching through time to touch you," writes Nao with her purple gel pen. Ruth decides to hunker down with Nao's diary, a few pages at a time, each night reading to Oliver and herself. She learns early on that Nao is planning on killing herself after she writes down the life story of her great-grandmother Jiko, the Buddhist nun. As the diary unfolds, it is evident that Nao is also recording the story of her own life. Moreover, she shares the events, as she knows it, of her dead great-uncle, the WW II pilot who was also a philosopher and lover of French literature. The opening of the book is abstract, unformed, and philosophical, but that only lasts for a few pages. Once the chapters begin, the narrative alternates between Ruth and Nao. I admit to an early concern, that the novel may be a YA-adult crossover, due to the chipper tone of Nao and her indelibly teenage style. But, eventually, as the story penetrates and cross-cuts through characters, the storylines become a piercing symphony. I am confident that you will be moved by not just its warmth, but its luminous beauty. "In the interstices between sleeping and waking, she floated in a dark liminal state that was not quite a dream, but was perpetually on the edge of becoming one. There she hung, submerged and tumbling slowly, like a particle of flotsam just below the crest of a wave that was always just about to break." Along the way, you will learn numerous Japanese words, which are footnoted, and Buddhist concepts, which are woven in seamlessly. I have had too many experiences of overweening narratives exerting Buddhist credo that discharge as shallow power point presentations or pedantic coffee table ideas. Ozeki doesn't disappoint. With a little magic realism (just a little!), a pinch of Murakami, and a lot of heart, she pulls the threads all together into a radiant tapestry. This book is a gift of love.

“If you’ve ever tried to keep a diary, then you’ll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how fast you write, you’re always stuck in the then and you can never catch up to what’s happening now, which means that now is pretty much doomed to extinction. It’s hopeless, really.” (p104) One summer when I was teaching high school, the staff and students all read Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” to prepare for the upcoming school year. We collectively discerned that the book’s message is that we are all connected; we used it as an organizing theme for the school year that followed. “A Tale for the Time Being” is a very different story, but it explores the same theme: it’s a thoughtful, interesting, enjoyable reflection on the idea that we are all, indeed, connected to each other across time and space. It’s a little uneven in places – occasionally contrived and simplistic – and the intended scope might be a bit too ambitious. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: you’ll like the story, identify with the characters, relish the mysteries, and finish with a few big ideas to chew on. Be sure to read the footnotes: the author uses them in a clever and subtle way to advance the story. That’s all I’ll say – no spoilers here.

I'm a big fan of tales from Asian-North American authors. Ms. Ozeki is a Canadian-American novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priestress who has experienced many places and times in her own life. If one were to read her biography, before or after delving into this novel, the reader would experience an "aha!" moment and better appreciate from where this story springs. In the final analysis, it is the the heart and mind of Ruth Ozeki that we are privileged to share and ponder. I did thoroughly enjoy the tantalizing mixture of Eastern and Western thought of the main characters, in both Japan and on a wee, British Columbia island, where a struggling resident novelist finds a plastic packet that has washed ashore. She takes the find home and therein begins a journey to explain the meaning of the contents, which are a teenager's diary written in modern Japanese and several, earlier letters written in French. In the process of the plot development, the people's lives, on both sides of the Pacific, come in conflict and final resolution, as the story weaves a complex plot, over time and place. By reading and researching the flotsam's contents, the novelist comes to question and resolve her own existence. The main character of the hand-written diary is a Japanese-American, teenage girl who has been snatched from her privileged, middle class, California upbringing and is stuck back into the lower strata of Tokyo society, all because her family is on brink of falling apart, due to sudden life changes. As the outsider in her new, Japanese school and neighborhood, the teenager is bullied and taunted into almost submission and degradation by her peers, until her 104 year old, great-grandmother, a secluded Zen Buddhist nun, rescues her. In this twist of fate, the girl learns to look below the surface of her changing world and family to realize her place is a valuable cog in the time machine of life. Near the end of the novel, I was a bit miffed and confused by the seemingly sidetracked description of quantum physics, which seeks to engage the novelist character in ways to explain the bizarre connection of her life and the existence of the girl in Tokyo. After concluding the novel, I was struck that this explanation of the universe was the author's means to make sense for the reader, the storyline and character development, which is excellent. This is not a book for those who like straight-forward plots or characters with neat endings. There is really no end to one's thoughts about this novel. Ms. Ozeki constructs her conclusion to be an open-ended question about life itself. Since I lived many years in the Far East, entrenched in a new philosophy that was not akin to my New England upbringing, I can appreciate the meanderings of Ms. Ozeki's novel. I still like to reflect on some this novel's quotes and conjure up how this tale could not have been different from what it was, since time is relative and it can still not be fully explained to suit one's perception of themselves and their worlds. If you enjoy such Asian - North American novels, you would also like the works of Tan Twan Eng or Gail Tsukiyama, to name a few of today's excellent, modern writers about Eastern - Western philosophies.

There is a LOT going on in this text—alternating narratives, epistemological questions about how stories are created (does the reader literally co-construct the narrative?), communication across time and space, the ontological meaning of suicide, war, history, philosophy, spirits, sacrifice, the effect of family obligations, the impact of bullying… Oh, and September 11. Ozeki does a lot of things well in this novel, not the least of which is creating numerous distinct voices as she weaves a multi-voiced narrative. The are, however, sections wherein the narrative drags (Nao’s time in her great-grandmother’s temple, for example), and sometimes reading this text felt like a chore. To Ozeki’s credit, though, I was intrigued enough to read to the end, mainly because I wanted to find out how it all turned out. But conclusions, in Ozeki’s world, are inconclusive. I suppose, in the end, I wanted more story and less story-about-story. So I doubt I’ll read another of Ozeki’s novels. This one seems like more than enough.

[NO SPOILERS] A work of literary fiction that fuses Zen Buddhism, Quantum Mechanics, Japanese Pop Culture, a Coming of Age Story, a time-bending mystery and Global Interconnectedness - what's not to love about Ruth Ozeki's `A Tale for The Time Being'? If I could, I would give this book more than five stars without hesitation. The secret hidden in the title of the book gives the first clue to its quietly mysterious nature. The phrase `time being' is not used in the commonly understood sense here. Drawing from the 13th Century Zen Master Dogen Zenji's sutra, the word `time being' has a different meaning. As it is explained on the very first page: "A `Time Being' is someone who lives in time, and that means you and me and everyone of us who is, was or ever will be. " The essence of the story is examining the nature of time, and kicks off with the diary of a Japanese schoolgirl Nao (`Now' - get it?). The diary, wrapped in a freezer bag, is washed ashore in British Columbia where it's discovered by Ruth, an author, based on Ozeki herself. In the diary, Nao talks about her intention to end her life soon. Trying to discover if the schoolgirl killed herself or died in the 2011 tsunami, Ruth and her husband begin an increasingly desperate search. Within the diary are also contained unforgettable characters like her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old feminist Zen nun Jiko and Haruki#1, a WWII Kamikaze pilot. An ordained Zen Master herself, Ozeki reveals the hidden common essence on seemingly disparate issues -- the death of individuals and the death of the planet, parallel universes and Buddhist metaphysics, the author Ruth's life and the life of teenager Nao. What I love most is that she does it so skillfully, so simply. At one point in the book, talking about his landscaping work, Ruth's husband Oliver says: "The work succeeds when all the cleverness and artifice have disappeared, after years of harvest and regrowth, when people begin to experience it as ambience only." Such is the success of this book too. Unlike other books that take on such lofty ambitions, this one thankfully does have a plot and twists that keep you reading right till the end. It has also beautifully captured moments of family life and some shocking instances of schoolyard bullying. It sometimes feels like it is meandering but hidden in the asides and casual interactions, you realize when you finish the book, were great revelations. I also liked that the soul of the book is inspiring and positive, not depressingly nihilistic like I find in many so-called great works of modern fiction. At one point, our main character, Ruth, quotes Zen Master Dogen as saying that each day is composed of 6,400,099,980 moments. The point is that every single one of those moments provides an opportunity to reestablish our will. Even the snap of a finger, he says, provides us with 65 opportunities to wake up and choose actions that will produce beneficial karma and turn our lives around. In the end, that stays with you as the message of the book. The possibility of making new choices in any one of the 6,400,099,980 moments we have every day. The possibility of choosing afresh within a snap of the fingers.

Excellent read, and a nice counterpoint to all of the dystopian YA novels I've been consuming lately--I swear they're the literary equivalent of potato chips. Ozeki is a talented writer and the first chapters of the book do an amazing job of catching your attention and drawing you in to the story. The narration trades off between a modern day novelist, Ruth, and a precocious Japanese schoolgirl, Naoko. *Mini-Spoiler* Though they never actually meet, their relationship brings up interesting issues of communication, time, distance, and what it means to be human. In the story, Naoko goes through serious turmoil, including ritualistic abuse and harassment by her peers. Her sections include beautiful Zen references and insider information about Japanese culture, and her aunt is an amazing character, but some of Ruth's story drags. It's a tribute to Ozeki's skill as a writer that she's able to maintain any kind of pace through an aging writer's admittedly self-indulgent lamentations on her writer's block while living in nearly uninhabited isolation. That said, Ozeki may have intended to juxtapose the crazy stimulation of Naoko's world with the relative peace of Ruth's, e.g., suicidal ideation vs. writer's block; permanently losing family home vs. temporarily losing a cat. The Tale moves quickly for the first two-thirds but the last third gets muddled. Some things wrap up too neatly while others overextend themselves. Themes of universality and metaphysics recur throughout the novel but they extrapolate a bit too far toward the end. Ruminations on quantum mechanics and alternate universes seem out of place with the rest of the story. Ultimately, I enjoyed the book very much and would recommend it to anyone who appreciates skillful writing and an engaging storyline. Just don't get your hopes up for a super satisfying ending.

Time, our place in time and our place within a social structure are focused on in Ruth Ozeki's Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel, A Tale for the Time Being. What gives the novel its philosophical foundation are the beliefs of its author, who is a Buddhist priest. This foundation also provides an emotional and moral center to the tales of three women, what they believe and the love they feel that is grounded in their beliefs. Throw in quantum physics, Schrodinger's cat and folklore about crows, and the result is a heavyweight novel that is easy to absorb and worthy of contemplation. Ruth is the present-day narrator who shares with her author creator being a writer and a Buddhist priest living in British Columbia. The fictional Ruth and her husband live in a small village on a sound, where the ocean waves still manage to deliver a package. It at first appears to be a copy of the Proust novel À la recherche du temps perdu saved in plastic. It is instead a journal remade with the novel's cover, a journal written by a teenage girl in Japan around the turn of the 21st century. Nao was raised in Silicon Valley when her father went to work there, but the bursting of the dot com bubble sent the family back to Japan. She is the epitome of a stranger living in a strange land. She isn't fluent in Japanese. She's behind in school. And she is bullied. The bullying is relentless and harrowing. Her classmates even hold a fake funeral for her and put it on the internet. Without consulting her, her parents decide to send her for the summer break to her great-grandmother Jiko, a 104-year-old Buddhist nun in a remote mountain location. This nun is the kind of fictional character who should exist in real life. She's a spiritual Auntie Mame who helped form some of Nao's father's best memories as a boy and is showing, not telling, her great-granddaughter the power of zazen, a method of meditation. She also hopes Nao develops a superpower. Ruth could use the power of meditation. She's been trying to write a memoir of her mother, who died several years ago after suffering from Alzheimer's, but has been stalled for ages. As a writer, she knows this is not healthy: An unfinished book, left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will, and ruthless determination to tame it again. Instead of her own work, Ruth is captivated by Nao and worries about her, even though the journal was written years ago. It may have reached Canada in the vanguard of debris drifting over after the tsunami and Fuskushima disaster, which is ongoing. Ruth doesn't even know if Nao is still alive. She not only wrote about killing herself, her father is sinking into depression ever more deeply because he cannot find work after they return to Japan. He isn't even successful at killing himself. He does roam the streets at night, and sometimes Nao follows him. These sections are highly reminiscent of Murakami's writing, especially in 1Q84 during night sessions involving a playground swing in the middle of a metropolis. Ruth also is having a hard time finding evidence online that Nao is real. Meanwhile, Nao plans to write a biography of Jiko but like Ruth, she gets off-track and the work is not done. Jiko admires early Japanese feminists, and may or may not have written an "I-novel", an early form of Japanese confessional fiction. Is this what Nao's journal is? She is deliberately reaching out to someone who will one day read what she has written: Maybe when I ask you a question like "You doing okay?" you should just tell me, even if I can't hear you, and then I'll just sit here and imagine what you might say. You might say, "Sure thing, Nao. I'm okay. I'm doin' just fine." Is she practicing I-fiction or trying to find someone, anyone, since her new life is so desolate? While Nao's father is trying to commit suicide, the reader also learns about Jiko's son. He was a kamikaze pilot during World War II. But he also was a scholar, a lover of French literature and poetry. Writings of his also surface. Perhaps it is inevitable, but there is an element of the fantastical toward the end of the novel before Ozeki brings everything back together. I can't say much without going into spoilers but again, it felt like wandering into Murakami territory and it felt right. Ozeki weaves in ideas about bullies, both personal and corporate, sustainability, old growth and how to live at peace in the multiple POV narrative that doesn't feel forced. There is ultimately a calmness that the writing delivers, and it has to do with realizing how connected we all are.

A Tale for Time Being by Ruth Ozeki Time is defined as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole." But a definition cannot begin to capture what time feels when you have to live through it. Through this PhD program I have wrestled with the concept of time. There is never enough of it. It either passes too fast, or too slow. Reading this book was extremely lethargic, for the main characters, speak of time often. Nao, the sixteen-year-old girl who's diary is the center of this story, explores what time means and how frustrating it can be. Her diary is for a time being, "...someone who lives in time..."; this book is meant to be read, for we readers are time beings. It is not often that you find a narrative that looks to explore this conception of time and does it so well. I have to say though, the plot line is heavy and it took me awhile to finish reading this story. And by awhile, I mean several months. It is not a book that one devours, just like Ruth (the other main character) did not devour Nao's diary in just one sitting. In A Tale for Time Being, there are two stories being told side by side, with one narrative's character addressing the other one. Nao writes her diary addressing the person who will find it and speaks to them as if they were already a part her life. At some points you aren't sure who needs the other more, is the writer needing the reader, or is the reader needing the writer? The juxtaposition of reading both the perspective of the writer and the reader, while yourself being an additional reader is trippy. It plays well into the themes brought up throughout the book, particularly the theme of time. Because time passes by differently for the writer, the reader of the diary, and then you the reader of the book. There are three different timelines, but everyone is centered on Nao's story. I was most stricken by Nao's definition of "now". Nao explains "now" as: "...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." This blew me away because she's hitting the nail on the head. Can we ever capture the now? As I am typing now, it is already then. Is it futile to attempt to capture the now, when it will always be the then? Is even trying to capture the now not allowing you to experience the now? The theme of exploring the conception of time resonated with me. Time is as elusive as the wind. You can feel it happening, but you can neither touch or see it. However, both wind and time can have physical effects on the world, and you can feel them both passing by. Time is also something that we all have to experience, regardless of how short or long we remain on this earth. However, it is not often enough that we appreciate time for what it is. Our time is limited; we only have so many heartbeats to be had, so spend them wisely. "In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader’s recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth." —Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouvé

A wonderful book

Worth a read.

Visitez l' univers de Ruth Ozeki, qui transporte et transforme le lecteur . Ses livres sont tres differents, mais ils ont tous une belle musique interne, qui fait que le lecteur se sent mieux au final. L' inspiration japonaise est forte, mais elle passe maintenant derriere celle des iles magiques du Pacifique canadien. L' auteur construit livre par livre un pont entre les cultures, un tres beau travail. A lire sans moderation.

excellent book but somewhat ruined by the gratuitous violence in the French chapter. So not useful to the story. I skimmed it but still??? why???

This was a very different book to anything I have read before. I have now read a few Japanese books and they are all quite unique (which doesn’t sound very unique!) They are all odd I suppose I mean, but in a good way. This book really drew me in from the start, the writing was original and it made me pay attention. We have a young girl (16 years of age, Nao) who is writing a diary and then we have an older woman (maybe middle aged, Ruth) who is reading the girl’s diary many years later. We alternate between the girl's diary as it is written and the response from Ruth in the present day reading it. It felt intense and real, as if the girl really was pouring her heart out onto the page. She had a nice writing style, honest and a slightly odd tone, very conversational, it was sad but intriguing. I founds myself really liking both of these women, they were great characters with lots of depth to them. I have to mention that there are LOTS of disturbing themes here; suicide, war, assault, rape, prostitution, bullying it’s quite a dark book. Atrocities both large and small. This is an incredibly sad and upsetting book, so be warned. I do however feel there was reason behind all of this, it wasn’t just there to shock the reader. There is also a bit of science and philosophy here too if that helps! The only downside to the actual writing/reading was all the notes so I was constantly flipping to the back of the book, and some of them really were not necessary. It ruined the flow. I think this is a book about loneliness and about strength of mind, or strength of character (are they the same thing?), but ultimately it is about life and death and about finding peace. 4.5 but rounding up 5*/5