Ruth Ozeki

If the rest of my reading in 2022 lives up to this first book then it should be a banner year. At over 500 pages, The Book of Form and Emptiness could have been a daunting read but I enjoyed it greatly. I found myself stealing moments to sit down and read it and then realizing that 30 or 40 minutes had gone by.

Benny Oh was twelve years old when his father, Kenny, fell in their back lane, passed out and was killed when a delivery truck driver, who couldn't see him for the crows gathered over show more him, drove over him. Kenny was a jazz musician, originally from Japan where he spent some time living in a Buddhist temple. Benny's mother, Annabelle, was grief-stricken and also felt guilty because she and Kenny had a fight before he left the house the night he died. Benny was also grief-stricken but maybe Annabelle didn't recognize that since he was so quiet. Annabelle worked for a media clipping service and soon after her husband's death she was told to work from home. Since the company also required that all items be archived for some length of time, the home quickly became cluttered with bags and bags of paper and then bags and bags of CDs. Annabelle was naturally a collector so soon the house was a health and safety hazard. The one island of tidiness was Benny's bedroom which he kept neat and tidy. Perhaps because of all the stuff or perhaps because of his grief or maybe a combination of both plus some underlying mental health condition, but about a year after his father's death Benny began hearing voices. These were the voices of the objects all around him.One day in school a pair of scissors told Benny to stab his teacher; Benny resisted but only insofar as he didn't stab his teacher but himself. This resulted in a stay in the Pediatric Psychiatry ward where Benny formed an attachment to an older girl named Alice. Alice preferred to be called the Aleph after a character in a story by Jorge Luis Borges. The Aleph was too old to stay on the pediatric ward but before she was transferred she left Benny a note to meet at the Library. The Library was one of Benny's favourite places; actually it was one of his mother's favourite places too as she had studied to be a librarian before she had to leave school to have Benny. It was in the library that Benny first heard from The Book, which was the book of his life. Annabelle also had a significant book come into her hands (in Michaels of all places) called Tidy Magic, a how-to book about decluttering written by a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest. Ultimately the books win the day but there are many days of turmoil and arguments and violence to get through before they can work their magic.

In one of those weird incidents of literary synchronicity this book and the audiobook I just finished both feature crows. In this book Kenny and then Annabelle feed a group of crows on their back porch. In return the crows give Annabelle little gifts and not only Kenny was sheltered by the crows but so was Annabelle when she fell down her porch steps. The Buddhist nun who wrote Tidy Magic also was directed to her calling by a crow. Crows aren't my favourite avian species but I have to admit that they are clever birds. I have to wonder if any more crows are going to pop up in 2022. show less

A writer living on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia finds a package washed ashore from Japan containing a diary and becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to the teenage girl who wrote it.

This was an absorbing, multilayered story, and I absolutely loved it. The settings were so vividly drawn that they enchanted me: a remote Canadian island frequently cut off by storms; the very strange Akiba district of Tokyo with its French-style cafes; a remote Buddhist monastery. show more Yet even more captivating was puzzling over whether the events being related were what was actually happening. The main character, Ruth, seems a stand-in for the author herself, but how much of the living author is actually part of the character? Was Naoko, the Japanese girl, killed in the tsunami of 2011, or did she survive? Is her diary even real or is it fictional? And if it is, who is its real writer? Perhaps it's all true, all at once. Yes, quantum theory and the multiverse does come into this, which I love, if the author can pull it off. Ozeki does pull it off splendidly--at least for me she did. This is my favorite kind of story, one that plays with reality and the conceits of fiction in new and risky ways, capturing my imagination and keeping me pondering long after I've closed the book. show less

So my first thought on finishing this book was "huh. That ending was a bit too perfect for my liking."
But after thinking about it, I realized... the ending presented isn't really the ending at all.

I'm going to be as vague as possible to avoid spoilers, so bear with me.

On the surface, it looks as though everything is neatly tied up in a bow at the end, and everything is looking optimistic, which, of course, is the type of story we all need to hear sometimes (even if we don't necessarily want show more to hear it). I didn't hate the ending, but it did feel a bit too sweet, but instead of leaving me content, this sweetness settled uncomfortably in my belly. Something wasn't... right.

That was because this is a novel by an author writing about herself. She is writing the book into existence. She is writing herself.

Maybe that does not seem important, but trust me, it is.

Because instead of ending up with a peachy-cream ending, this small details leaves us with something a little less sweet: an author writing her own ending. An author fabricating an ending to her own tale. An author writing the ending she wants not the ending that exists.

It's subtle, but the last 50 pages or so of the book hint at this too (you know, those pages where they go on and on about philosophy, and that dream that kind of makes you quirk your head and wonder what kind of book you're reading).

This ending changes everything. Because now the story isn't about Nao and Ruth, but it's about you, and how rarely in life do we get endings, so instead we create the ending we want in order to soothe something down inside of us that needs that resolution, or that message, or that solution. It's about how we choose our realities, and what we believe, so that we can move on and be better people tomorrow. It's about the power of stories, and of communication between strangers, and how our own choices can impact lives thousands of miles or years away.

It's about our desire for happily ever after, and how we create that ending for ourselves and others in our minds, even if it really does not exist. show less

I finished it in less than two days because I couldn't put it down. so many reasons to love this book, not least of which is right near the end when a Japanese housewife takes the Chicken Bone express through Louisiana - finally a book which explains how amazing it is to experience America by train (coach class). It did feel as if there a wee list somewhere: Hispanic family scarred by illegal immigration tick, African-American family as heart of the community tick, vegetarian lesbians tick, show more but in a way that was kind of the point and the many characters aren't one-dimensional representations, but fallible, admirable people with individual world views and life choices, who mostly tend to grow or change. The love story was also a slight stretch, but its ups and downs; confusions and joys were convincing enough to have me hoping there would be a happy ending - not necessarily a spoiler! (and at least the lovers weren't attractive in a standard tv sense but because they were interesting people) I'm still eating meat, but I definitely think about it beforehand!! show less