Review: A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

5 stars for A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

This book comes recommended by someone holding a senior management position in my workplace and is subsequently loaned to me by the same. I will be fibbing without batting an eyelid if I am to say that there is no pressure whatsoever in my quest to read this book with the hope that I will like it somehow. It does not matter that the book is passed to me with the accompanying message that it is perfectly fine if I do not enjoy the story as we all have our preferences, there is just this something at the back of my mind that troubles me. What if?

Well, I am glad to say that my worries prove to be unfounded. Truth is, by the time I am well into the so-called third chapter, any discomfort along with the "what if" has wholly dissipated. The story is... WoW. Totally unexpectedly exceptional. I am captivated by the way the author pens this story that feels more like reading a memoir (her memoir) than fiction. With true events - 11 Mar 2011 earthquake, tsunami and catastrophic meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors to name a few - weaved among a cast of fictional characters, the author explores what it means to live at the moment in time, now.

Never mind that it is not a message in a bottle but a Hello Kitty lunchbox that is cast out onto the ocean, all the same, the stories contain within transport me across time and space into schoolgirl Nao's world where she lives to tell the tales of her family and especially that of her 104-year old great granny whom she feels is the only person who truly understands time.

Time as the theme in this book is as interesting as it is mystifying. The book title, for instance, carries a double meaning. (1) A Tale for the Time Being. Time being as in the moment in time. A Tale for the Moment in Time (2) A Tale for the Time Being. The Being which is Time. A Tale for Time. Do you feel this way too when you first come across the book title?

Time and again, the author brings me on an emotional roller coaster ride as I alternate between first person Nao and third person Ruth's narratives. Just when I am so utterly absorbed in Nao's world, I am pulled out from that alternate world back into being Ruth the observer again. And this is where the real challenge lies; to sleep or stay up to find out more.

Finally, in case you are wondering, yes, I am aware right from the beginning that third person narrator, Ruth, shares the same name as the author. And that by itself, is a beauty in A Tale For the Time Being.


Publisher: Large Print Press; Lrg edition
Publication date: 7 Jan 2014

*** Favourite quote ***

The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't now, then where did it go?

~ A Tale For the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki

@}--->>--->>-----

“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace — and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox —possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

*Blurb from author's website*

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