A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A brilliant, unforgettable novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness Finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award 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. Full of Ozeki's signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home. Editorial Reviews An exquisite novel: funny, tragic, hard-edged and ethereal at once. --David Ulin, Los Angeles Times As contemporary as a Japanese teenager's slang but as ageless as a Zen koan, Ruth Ozeki's new novel combines great storytelling with a probing investigation into the purpose of existence. . . . She plunges us into a tantalizing narration that brandishes mysteries to be solved and ideas to be explored. . . . Ozeki's profound affection for her characters makes A Tale for the Time Being as emotionally engaging as it is intellectually provocative. --The Washington Post A delightful yet sometimes harrowing novel . . . Many of the elements of Nao's story--schoolgirl bullying, unemployed suicidal 'salarymen,' kamikaze pilots--are among a Western reader's most familiar images of Japan, but in Nao's telling, refracted through Ruth's musings, they become fresh and immediate, occasionally searingly painful. Ozeki takes on big themes . . . all drawn into the stories of two 'time beings,' Ruth and Nao, whose own fates are inextricably bound. --The New York Times Book Review Ozeki's novel is a tale for any time . . . Metafiction and parallel universes and climate change and Zen Buddhism--this book has so much to appeal. --Matthew Salesses, The Week Sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nao Yasutani's voice is the heart and soul of this very satisfying book. . . . The contemporary Japanese style and use of magical realism are reminiscent of author Haruki Murakami. --USA Today A terrific novel full of breakthroughs both personal and literary. . . . Ozeki revels in Tokyo teen culture--this goes far beyond Hello Kitty--and explores quantum physics, military applications of computer video games, Internet bullying, and Marcel Proust, all while creating a vulnerable and unique voice for the sixteen-year-old girl at its center. . . . Ozeki has produced a dazzling and humorous work of literary origami. . . . Nao's voice--funny, profane and deep--is stirring and unforgettable as she ponders the meaning of her life. --The Seattle Times Beautifully written, intensely readable and richly layered . . . one of the best books of the year so far. --St. Louis Post-Dispatch Masterfully woven . . . Entwining Japanese language with WWII history, pop culture with Proust, Zen with quantum mechanics, Ozeki alternates between the voices of two women to produce a spellbinding tale. --O, The Oprah Magazine Forget the proverbial message in a bottle: This Tale fractures clichs as it affirms the lifesaving power of words. . . . As Ozeki explores the ties between reader and writer, she offers a lesson in redemption that reinforces the pricelessness of the here and now. --Elle A powerful yarn of fate and parallel lives. --Good Housekeeping Ozeki weaves together Nao's adolescent yearnings with Ruth's contemplative digressions, adding bits of Zen wisdom, as well as questions about agency, creativity, life, death, and human connections along the way. A Tale for the Time Being is a dreamy, spiritual investigation of how to gracefully meet the waves of time, which, in the end, come for us all. --The Daily Beast As we read Nao's story and the story of Ozeki's reading of it, as we go back and forth between the text and the notes, time expands for us. It opens up onto something resembling narrative eternity . . . page after page, slowly unfolding. And what a beautiful effect that is for a novel to create. --Alan Cheuse, NPR's All Things Considered Superb . . . her best and most adventurous novel to date . . . likely to leave readers feeling its emotional impact for a long time to come. --BookPage Magnificent . . . brings together a Japanese girl's diary and a transplanted American novelist to meditate on everything from bullying to the nature of conscience and the meaning of life. . . . The novel's seamless web of language, metaphor, and meaning can't be disentangled from its powerful emotional impact: These are characters we care for deeply, imparting vital life lessons through the magic of storytelling. A masterpiece, pure and simple. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) An intriguing, even beautiful narrative remarkable for its unusual but attentively structured plot. . . . We go from one story line to the other, back and forth across the Pacific, but the reader never loses place or interest. --Booklist (starred review) Ozeki's absorbing novel is an extended meditation on writing, time, and people in time. . . . The characters' lives are finely drawn, from Ruth's rustic lifestyle to the Yasutani family's straitened existence after moving from Sunnyvale, California, to Tokyo. Nao's winsome voice contrasts with Ruth's intellectual ponderings to make up a lyrical disquisition on writing's power to transcend time and place. This tale from Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist priest, is sure to please anyone who values a good story broadened with intellectual vigor. --Publishers Weekly An extraordinary novel about a courageous young woman, riven by loneliness, by time, and (ultimately) by tsunami. 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--bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page. --Junot Daz, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of This Is How You Lose Her A beautifully interwoven novel about magic and loss and the incomprehensible threads that connect our lives. I loved it. --Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love 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 its often miraculous results. --Alice Sebold, bestselling author of The Lovely Bones Ingenious and touching. . . . I read it with great pleasure. --Philip Pullman, award-winning author of The Golden Compass One of the most deeply moving and thought-provoking novels I have read in a long time. In precise and luminous prose, Ozeki captures both the sweep and detail of our shared humanity. The result is gripping, fearless, inspiring and true. --Madeline Miller, author of the Orange Prize winner The Song of Achilles A Tale for the Time Being is equal parts mystery and meditation. The mystery is a compulsive, gritty page-turner. The meditation--on time and memory, on the oceanic movement of history, on impermanence and uncertainty, but also resilience and bravery--is deep and gorgeous and wise. A completely satisfying, continually surprising, wholly remarkable achievement. --Karen Joy Fowler, bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club A great achievement, and the work of a writer at the height of her powers. Ruth Ozeki has not only reinvigorated the novel itself, the form, but she's given us the tried and true, deep and essential pleasure of characters we love and who matter. --Jane Hamilton, bestselling author of A Map of the World Profoundly original, with authentic, touching characters and grand, encompassing themes, Ruth Ozeki's novel proves that truly great stories--like this one--can both deepen our understanding of self and remind us of our shared humanity. --Deborah Harkness, bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night I'm late to the Ruth Ozeki party but now I'm dancing hard. A Tale for the Time Being is a confrontational yet tender novel, the narrative makes the reader work and stretch and think about the way they tell their own stories. Each of its facets is perfectly cut--a teenage girl in Japan, a writer in Canada, Buddhism, the oceans, the inheritances we both keep and throw away--and the whole glimmers and glitters. I've given away quite a few copies of a A Tale for the Time Being over this pandemic; I think it creates a moment to laugh or think or just exhale. --Nadifa Mohamed, author of The Fortune Men I've long been an admirer of Ruth Ozeki's work, and her exquisite, richly textured novel, A Tale for the Time Being, marks the stunning return of a writer at the height of her powers. Seamlessly weaving together tales of the past and present that are equally magical and heartbreaking, she transports us to the worlds of Nao and Jiko, in Japan, and Ruth, on a remote island in British Columbia, where their worlds collide as they reach across time to find the meaning of life and home. . . . A wise and wonderfully inventive story that will resonate through time. --Gail Tsukiyama, bestselling author of The Samurai's Garden - From the Publisher ...delightful yet sometimes harrowing...Many of the elements of Nao's story-schoolgirl bullying, unemployed suicidal salarymen, kamikaze pilots-are among a Western reader's most familiar images of Japan, but in Nao's telling, refracted through Ruth's musings, they become fresh and immediate, occasionally searingly painful. Ozeki takes on big themes in A Tale for the Time Being-not just the death of individuals but also the death of the planet. In doing so, she ranges widely, drawing in everything from quantum mechanics and the theory of infinite possibilities in an infinite number of universes to the teachings of the 13th-century Zen master Dogen Zenji. - The New York Times Book Review - Lesley Downer As contemporary as a Japanese teenager's slang but as ageless as a Zen koan, Ruth Ozeki's new novel combines great storytelling with a probing investigation into the purpose of existence. From the first page of A Tale for the Time Being, Ozeki plunges us into a tantalizing narration that brandishes mysteries to be solved and ideas to be explored...Ozeki's profound affection for her characters, which warmed her earlier novels...makes A Tale for the Time Being as emotionally engaging as it is intellectually provocative. - The Washington Post - Wendy Smith Ozeki's absorbing third novel (after All Over Creation) is an extended meditation on writing, time, and people in time: time beings. Nao Yasutani is a Japanese schoolgirl who plans to drop out of time--to kill herself as a way of escaping her dreary life. First, though, she intends to write in her diary the life story of her great-grandmother Jiko, a Zen Buddhist nun. But Nao actually ends up writing her own life story, and the diary eventually washes up on the shore of Canada's Vancouver Island, where a novelist called Ruth lives. Ruth finds the diary in a freezer bag with some old letters in French and a vintage watch. Ruth's investigation into how the bag traveled from Japan to her island, and why it contains what it does, alternates with Nao's chapters. The characters' lives are finely drawn, from Ruth's rustic lifestyle to the Yasutani family's straitened existence after moving from Sunnyvale, Calif., to Tokyo. Nao's winsome voice contrasts with Ruth's intellectual ponderings to make up a lyrical disquisition on writing's power to transcend time and place. This tale from Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist priest, is sure to please anyone who values a good story broadened with intellectual vigor. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Literary Agency. (Mar. 12) - Publishers Weekly Sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Nao Yasutani's voice is the heart and soul of this very satisfying book. - USA Today Ingenious and touching...I read it with great pleasure. - award-winning author of The Golden Compass Philip Pullman A terrific novel full of breakthroughs both personal and literary...Nao's voice-funny, profane and deep-is stirring and unforgettable as she ponders the meaning of her life. - Seattle Times A Tale for the Time Being is equal parts mystery and meditation. The mystery is a compulsive, gritty page-turner. The meditation-on time and memory, on the oceanic movement of history, on impermanence and uncertainty, but also resilience and bravery-is deep and gorgeous and wise. A completely satisfying, continually surprising, wholly remarkable achievement, this is a book to be read and reread. - New York Times bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler An intriguing, even beautiful narrative remarkable for its unusual but attentively structured plot...We go from one story line to the other, back and forth across the Pacific, but the reader never loses place or interest. - Booklist (starred review) 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. - New York Times bestselling author Alice Sebold Masterfully woven...Entwining Japanese language with WWII history, pop culture with Proust, Zen with quantum mechanics, Ozeki alternates between the voices of two women to produce a spellbinding tale. - The Oprah Magazine O Profoundly original, with authentic, touching characters and grand, encompassing themes, Ruth Ozeki's novel proves that truly great stories-like this one-can both deepen our understanding of self and remind us of our shared humanity. - New York Times bestselling author Deborah Harkness A powerful yarn of fate and parallel lives. - Good Housekeeping There is far too much to say about this remarkable and ambitious book in a few sentences. This is for real and not just another hyped-up blurb. A Tale for the Time Being is a great achievement, and it is the work of a writer at the height of her powers. Ruth Ozeki has not only reinvigorated the novel itself, the form, but she's given us the tried and true, deep, and essential pleasure of characters whom we love and who matter. - New York Times bestselling author Jane Hamilton As we read Nao's story and the story of Ozeki's reading of it, as we go back and forth between the text and the notes, time expands for us. It opens up onto something resembling narrative eternity...page after page, slowly unfolding. And what a beautiful effect that is for a novel to create. - NPR's All Things Considered (audio review) Ozeki leaves us at a moment in time where, as in quantum physics, there are no absolutes in terms of past, present, and future. Just Nao. And that's such a pleasure. - New York Daily News If you found a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore, containing an old diary, would it change your life? The answer in Ozeki's tale is emphatically YES. There's much weirdness and wonder in store in this new novel from the author of My Year of Meats. - BookPage Forget the proverbial message in a bottle: This Tale fractures clichs as it affirms the lifesaving power of words...[and] reinforces the pricelessness of the here and now. - Elle A wise and wonderfully inventive story that will resonate through time. - author of The Samurai's Garden Gail Tsukiyama As contemporary as a Japanese teenager's slang but as ageless as a Zen koan, Ruth Ozeki's new novel combines great storytelling with a probing investigation into the purpose of existence. - Washington Post Delightful yet sometimes harrowing...Many of the elements of Nao's story-schoolgirl bullying, unemployed suicidal ‘salarymen,' kamikaze pilots-are among a Western reader's most familiar images of Japan, but in Nao's telling, refracted through Ruth's musings, they become fresh and immediate, occasionally searingly painful. - New York Times Book Review For Ruth, Ozeki's tone is slightly worried and obsessive as she reads the diary aloud to her husband. She lends a note of childishness and forced cheerfulness to Nao and her (literally) purple prose. The intoned prayers of gratitude from Nao's great-grandmother, a feminist Buddhist nun, are genius. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. - AudioFile Ozeki's novel illustrates the interconnectedness of all things. Despite being stuffed full of topics-from quantum physics to kamikaze pilots, tsunamis, and a billion other things-the novel is suffused with a warmth and immediacy that keep the listener hanging on every word. The story alternates between Ruth, a blocked writer living on an island off British Columbia, and Nao, a suicidal Japanese schoolgirl. Ruth finds Nao's diary in a Hello Kitty lunch box on the beach, along with letters, an older diary, and a watch. For Ruth, Ozeki's tone is slightly worried and obsessive as she reads the diary aloud to her husband. She lends a note of childishness and forced cheerfulness to Nao and her (literally) purple prose. The intoned prayers of gratitude from Nao's great-grandmother, a feminist Buddhist nun, are genius. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine - APRIL 2013 - AudioFile Ozeki's novel illustrates the interconnectedness of all things. Despite being stuffed full of topics-from quantum physics to kamikaze pilots, tsunamis, and a billion other things-the novel is suffused with a warmth and immediacy that keep the listener hanging on every word. The story alternates between Ruth, a blocked writer living on an island off British Columbia, and Nao, a suicidal Japanese schoolgirl. Ruth finds Nao's diary in a Hello Kitty lunch box on the beach, along with letters, an older diary, and a watch. For Ruth, Ozeki's tone is slightly worried and obsessive as she reads the diary aloud to her husband. She lends a note of childishness and forced cheerfulness to Nao and her (literally) purple prose. The intoned prayers of gratitude from Nao's great-grandmother, a feminist Buddhist nun, are genius. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine - APRIL 2013 - AudioFile Ozeki's magnificent third novel (All Over Creation, 2003, etc.) brings together a Japanese girl's diary and a transplanted American novelist to meditate on everything from bullying to the nature of conscience and the meaning of life. On the beach of an island off British Columbia's coast, Ruth finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox containing a stack of letters and a red book. The book contains 16-year-old Nao's diary, bound within the covers of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time--and that's no accident, since both funny, grieving Nao and blocked, homesick Ruth are obsessed with time: how it passes, how we live in it. Nao wants to drop out of time; so does her father, a computer programmer who spent 10 years in California's Silicon Valley before the dot-com bust apparently sent the family back to Tokyo and subjected Nao to vicious bullying at school. Ruth moved from New York City to Canada since it was an easier place to care for her sick husband and dying mother but now feels the move was a withdrawal and is finding it hard to write. She plunges into Nao's diary, which also includes the stories of her 104-year-old great-grandmother, Jiko, an anarchist and feminist turned Buddhist nun, and Jiko's son Haruki, a philosophy student forced to become a kamikaze pilot during World War II. The letters in the lunchbox are Haruki's, and his secret army diary begins the book's extended climax, which transcends bitter anguish to achieve heartbreaking poignancy as both Nao and Ruth discover what it truly means to be a time being. Ozeki faultlessly captures the slangy cadences of a contemporary teen's voice even as she uses it to convey Nao's pain and to unobtrusively offer a quiet introduction to the practice and wisdom of Zen through Jiko's talks with her great-granddaughter. The novel's seamless web of language, metaphor and meaning can't be disentangled from its powerful emotional impact: These are characters we care for deeply, imparting vital life lessons through the magic of storytelling. A masterpiece, pure and simple. - Kirkus Reviews