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A Tale for the Time Being

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A Tale for the Time Being

Written by: Ruth Ozeki
Narrated by: Ruth Ozeki
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About this listen

Winner: The Kitschies - Red Tentacle novel award 2013

"Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you."

Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes and dreams of a young girl. She suspects it might have arrived on a drift of debris from the 2011 tsunami. With every turn of the page, she is sucked deeper into an enchanting mystery. In a small cafe in Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao Yasutani is navigating the challenges thrown up by modern life. In the face of cyber-bullying, the mysteries of a 104-year-old Buddhist nun and great-grandmother, and the joy and heartbreak of family, Nao is trying to find her own place - and voice - through a diary she hopes will find a reader and friend who finally understands her.

Weaving across continents and decades, and exploring the relationship between reader and writer, fact and fiction, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.

©2013 Ruth Ozeki (P)2013 Canongate Books Ltd Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Mystery

Critic Reviews

"Bewitching, intelligent, and heartbreaking... Nao is an inspired narrator and her quest to tell her great grandmother's story, to connect with her past and with the larger world, is both aching and true. Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists and here she is at her absolute best." (Junot Diaz)
" A Tale for the Time Being is a timeless story. Ruth Ozeki beautifully renders not only the devastation of the collision between man and the natural world, but also the often miraculous results of it. She is a deeply intelligent and humane writer who offers her insights with a grace that beguiles. I truly love this novel." (Alice Sebold)
"Ingenious and touching, A Tale for the Time Being is also highly readable. And interesting: the contrast of cultures is especially well done." (Philip Pullman)
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This book has many layers and subtext to it. A first hand version of the war fighter, does he really feel heroic or just a lamb to be slaughtered. It talks about spirituality and materialism in a very simple manner. Bringing in quantum mechanics and metaphysics in simple narrative is a good introduction to these subjects but I wished it had more significantly came across or was not used at all.
Also it is beautifully narrated by the author herself. Thankfully I enjoyed reading it and contemplating what is time being through her perspective.

A book of time being

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brilliantly narrated by author herself. profound. worth a second time over. covers a spectre of topics. full of heart.

Must listen!

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I really enjoyed at least 90% of this book. Many of the characters’ have heartbreaking arcs and we can feel their emotions as if its our own. I actually enjoyed Naoko’s story a lot more than Ruth’s. To be honest, I found the character Ruth to be unappealing. This is a good example of why authors should not name characters after themselves because those sentiments we have towards characters, sort of reflect on the author too, otherwise.
Overall, it was interesting to understand Japanese culture and to see how Buddhism (which was born in India) evolved in Japan. There are a lot of interesting ideas and hypotheses about time and how it works, which was very interesting.
The only section I didn’t like is the final chapter where the author uses some weird dream sequence to bring in a fantastical , magical realism element and then she goes on to use quantum physics as the reason behind how the book ends . I found that weird, distasteful and just out of character for how the book was built up until that point.
Still, this was a good listen. The author is a good narrator, very clear. But there were some sections when she voiced Japanese characters where I felt the accent was oddly racist.

Engrossing and intimate portrayal of the life of a stranger

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