Ruth, living on an island in Canada, discovers a diary (written by Nau who lives in Japan), letters from WWII, and a watch inside a Hello Kitty lunchbox on the beach. They presumably made the Pacific crossing from Japan’s massive tsunami. Ruth, who is half Japanese is able to read the diary but not the letters. The diary, though, leads her to believe Nau and her father are intent on committing suicide. Ruth illogically thinks she can save them when in reality, given the time for the diary to cross the ocean, the deeds are probably already done. Everything about this situation though is unusual and time isn’t what we think it is. This is a very dark book and there are so many trigger warnings, I made a list:
Sexual Assault
Suicide
Harm to animals
9-11 jumper
Kamikazi pilot who doesn’t want to die
Prostitution
Tsunami
Radiation
Bullying is the one of the worst, and it makes the reader want to bail. However, it is resolved in the end with a most unique ending I may have ever read. I wish this book weren’t so dark. It really felt like the author was trying to make it as horrific as possible. So I had to take quite a long time to think on it before writing a review. Because of the ending, I recommend it. But beware of the darkness before the light. ( )

Family Values

Review Old Jiko style: Book is good. Book is bad. Same thing.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I loved the writing style and the mystery between Nao, Ruth and the Hello Kitty lunchbox. I adored Old Jiko and her words of wisdom. I was mostly interested in the stores of Haruki #1 and Haruki #2

It lost me a little bit towards the end with the quantum physics stuff and the receding ending to the story but I suppose the whole point was to make you consider the possibility of different worlds. I'm not sure that I believe!

Many readers may struggle with the focus on suicide, bullying and the dark side of Nao's life, but for me those sections helped provide necessary depth to the overall story. Those sections also made this a slow read for me....at times I had to force myself to go back because the story was sad and difficult for me even though I wanted to know what happened to our characters.

Overall I think it is well worth reading.



( )

Loved this message-in-a-bottle book! Told in two voices across a span of years, hinting that time is nonlinear and characters live in the moment when they are read. The author is a Zen Buddhist priest addressing the concepts of time, the life-giving power of words, quantum mechanics, multiple universes, and life as seen thru the eyes of a Japanese teen. ( )

A lovely, difficult book that will stay with me for a long time.

A Tale for the Time Being is a "You must change your life" kind of book. It's about time, death, consciousness, causality, and making meaning. It's also quirky and metafictional, but is nevertheless an accessible read, with likable characters and fairly linear storytelling.

Nao is a charming but depressed Japanese teenager dealing with brutal bullies, a suicidal father, and the aftershocks of family trauma from the Second World War. Nao keeps a diary that mysteriously ends up in the hands of Ruth, a fictionalized version of the author, who tries to track down Nao and reconstruct her life and fate. The novel dips its toe into the realms of speculative and surrealist fiction as it explores this relationship between reader and diarist.

A Tale for the Time Being feels like a catalog of strategies for responding to the impermanence and suffering of life: from suicide to making art to mindless Internet surfing to planting trees to the meditation practice of Nao's larger-than-life Buddhist nun great-grandmother. It's a book that goes deep, and at times it is an uncomfortable read. The forthright depictions of bullying, suicide, war, natural disaster, and sex work are never gratuitous, but they are graphic. That said, A Tale for the Time Being is absolutely a novel about hope. After Nao's spiral into darkness, subsequent moments of joy and rebirth feel earned.

If I didn't give this book five stars, it's only because it felt a little too linear, despite the meta, timey-wimey storytelling conceit. I wanted just a bit more ambiguity and weirdness, especially near the end.

Overall an excellent, profound read, and one that will hopefully inspire me to spend some time on my zafu this winter (I have a zafu and zabuton lovingly made by hippies in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so I truly have no excuse). ( )