Review: A tale for the time being, by Ruth Ozeki.

I started writing this right after finishing the book, in audio format. 

I often don’t get around to writing, because the ADHD and CCD* kick in, and instead of taking the trouble to formulate my thoughts the iPad seduces me into going online to see what else is happening out there. 

However, that morning I was woken up by a howling windstorm, and then the power went out. No internet for me.

Just before falling asleep I had listened to the description of a windstorm, with accompanying power outage, on Cortes Island on the  B.C. coast. You have to admire the Universe’s wink.

First, I highly recommend this book. 

I could not get into it the first time I tried it. The first chapter introduces Nao, a Japanese school girl, scribbling a diary  in a coffeeshop in a notebook designed to look like a copy of a French classic. It did not appeal to me. I returned it early.  However, I had so enjoyed Ozeki’s earlier novels that I decided to try again. 

The story grew on me with the introduction of the second main character, Ruth. Like the author Ruth is a novelist who has been transplanted from New York City to Cortes Island  for  the sake of her husband’s work. 

Cortes Island lies in the Northern part of the Salish sea, in between Vancouver Island and the B.C. coast. It is a magical place, quite akin in many ways to my own beloved corner of the West Kootenays. It takes two hours to get from Nakusp to a larger centre, with ferries involved in two of the three routes, a bit  like getting off an island. I  loved the descriptions of island life, so much like here.

On a beach walk Ruth picks up a mysterious piece of flotsam, or is that jetsam? that contains Nao’s diary wrapped in plastic. How handy that Ruth’s mother was Japanese and she can read it.

How did the diary get there? Is it part of debris making its way to B.C. after the 2011 tsunami? We never find out. 

From then on Nao’s story alternates with that of  Ruth and the two lives become  intertwined, even though they never meet.  

Nao’s diary is addressed to whoever will read it, as a fellow Time Being, a being in time.

Nao had spent ten formative years of her childhood in California, where her dad had been working as a computer programmer. Something goes wrong and the family returns to Tokyo, ruined both financially and spiritually. Nao is mercilessly bullied at school, but does not let her parents know.

They have enough on their plate. Dad suffers from increasing depression

including suicide attempts.

Respite comes from Dad’s grandmother, a Zen nun, who lives in a crumbling monastery on a mountain.  Summers with her and the teachings of Zen give Nao the strength to cope with her challenging life.

Ruth becomes obsessed with Nao and starts to investigate whether she is still alive. Her dreams become enmeshed with events in Japan. Meanwhile  Nao is having spiritual experiences that involve her great uncle, dead as a kamikaze pilot in the last days of WW2.

The novel becomes increasingly surreal, playing around with life and death, time and space and consciousness in a most enchanting way. 

Highly recommended. 

*CCD Compulsive Comment Disorder. Coming to the DSM 6 as soon as someone concocts a drug for it.