A Tale for the Time Being Review

 A Tale for the Time Being" and Ruth Ozeki were discovered to me and I suppose many others by Lana Bastasic, one of my favorite contemporary authors. On her Instagram profile, Bastasic wrote about how Ozeki made her read as a reader and not as an author. This and some additional information about the book’s plot and ideas made me buy this book. I even took it with me to my trip back to Serbia and I am not sure how appropriate it is that I read the first 100 pages of it during the 5 hour delay on Serbian Christmas Eve. In any case, I have recently finished the whole novel and it did take me some time to really wrap my thoughts about it. However, as I was talking about it to my mother, the memories of Ozeki’s writing and one particular character definitely made me feel something. That made me realize that this is a novel that does require careful reading and some time to think about it. I am glad that I gave it both of those things and while I am sure that some of the ideas and philosophies presented in the novel flew over my head, I really enjoyed it.

"A Tale for the Time Being" follows two stories with numerous more finding their way. In Japan, a sixteen year old girl, Nao, decides to write down the life of her great-grandmother, a famous zen buddhist. The diary in which she is writing ends up in the hands of Ruth, a novelist who lives on a remote Canadian island, after the 2011 tsunami. As Ruth reads more about Nao and her family, with their issues, she grows more and more connected to them, at least partially as a way to avoid dealing with her problems. The stories that both Nao and Ruth tell are full of fantasy and magic, but are also so deeply human and recognizable. I must say I did enjoy Nao’s passages a little bit more than Ruth’s, but the more details came out about Ruth, the more I realized about her character as well.

Since I already started talking about characters, I will continue. The two protagonists are Ruth and Nao, and they are joined by several colorful characters living on the same island as Ruth and her partner who is also an artist. They are not the most influential characters in terms of plot, but add a lot of life and intrigue to the story and some of them did make me chuckle. Their human flaws, but also kindness and willingness to help Ruth added more life to this isolated island and I would say made it nicer to live on. On the Japanese side, I would argue that the characters around Nao are even more interesting and fascinating. I wish I could tell you all of their stories and go into each of their lives and analyze why they are so compelling and emotional to me, but I really want you to experience it in full force and I do not want to ruin it for you. Even if I were to attempt to analyze all symbols and stories in this novel, I am sure I would have forgotten something incredibly important.

There is so much warmth and love in this book that characters show in so many different ways. Often, it is obvious that they want to show it but do not know how or do it in some wrong way that is misinterpreted. Families, lovers, friends and even people who do not even know each other exert so much love throughout this novel and this idea that humanity is fundamentally going to be okay because of it is what I took from this novel. The care that Nao’s family showed her, even though they were not always the best at noticing her issues because they were dealing with theirs and her great grandmother's patience, time and knowledge she shared with her warmed my heart so much.

It is also hard to talk about what this book is about? It’s about just about everything, packaged in a beautifully simple and addictive writing. Ozeki tackles incredibly complex topics (including quantum physics and zen buddhism), but she approaches them in a way that makes it so digestible even to somebody like me that has very little to no training or education in those topics. This is also a loud pacifist novel, seen through the exploration of consequences of sending young men into battle they don’t want to go in both on their psyche, as well as the generations to come after them. Once again, Ozenki’s approach to this topic is open and legible, but not losing track of the importance of what she is writing about and who she is writing it through.

Without spoiling too much of the novel, the ending is one that I really enjoyed. After everything that Nao and Ruth have gone through, I believe that this ending is not the only suitable one, but I definitely think it absolutely fits the rest of the story and I enjoyed it a lot to the end.

I have seen that Ruth Ozeki has a few more books published and I will definitely look into reading more of her novels in the future.

Did you read this book? Did you read anything else by Ruth Ozeki? What did you think?