A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki, 有時

Stories, for me, are always better when there’s a plot twist or a layer of the unexpected. I definitely adore me some symbolism, metaphor, character development, tension and suspense, but when there’s a wrinkle like a doorway in the back of [The Lion, the Witch and] the Wardrobe, I’m truly all in. Ruth Ozeki’s third novel, A Tale for the Time Being (2013) has got all of the above and more. It’s tough to review this one without spoilers, so this will be a relatively short piece that will hopefully serve as a siren song to lure you in to Ozeki’s world of wonder.

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The story begins with Nao, a 16 year old Japanese American girl who grew up in California but finds herself and her family back in Tokyo after her father becomes unemployed in the States. Being raised in the US with a limited grasp of Japanese language and culture, in Japan she feels like a stranger in her own ethnic land. Combining this with her father’s unemployment and depression and her dysfunctional family life, she herself becomes despondent and eventually suicidal. Her voice in the book is a narration of her diary through her times of despair, disorientation and growth through her myriad life challenges. Prior to her loosely plotted suicide, she stuffs the diary into a ziplock bag inside of a Hello Kitty lunchbox and hurls it into the sea, hoping that someone will find it and empathize with her disenchantment or at least relate to her story.

On the other side of the Pacific in British Columbia, a writer named Ruth (self-inserted) with existential troubles of her own, finds the lunchbox washed ashore and embarks on a fervent investigation into the diary’s cryptic contents. As she reads more about Nao and her family’s struggles, she becomes aware of the girl’s unfortunate plight and her intention to end her own life. Having very little information as to the when of the journal, she becomes increasingly curious; borderline obsessed to find out if Nao is still alive, and sets about a search that ultimately yields only meager results. Despite the dearth of information, she perseveres as it becomes clear that the answers she seeks and whether or not she finds them will affect her own uncertain trajectory and existence.

Along with the diary, the lunchbox contained a watch that belonged to Nao’s great uncle, a Kamikaze pilot conscripted against his will during World War II. Going back to that symbolism I mentioned earlier, the watch becomes a significant metaphor for the passage of time, time running out, and our constant denial of and battle with this reality. Along with the watch and its reminder of our limited existence, the story of Ruth and Nao slowly unfolds as a tapestry of important life lessons for both the characters and the reader, and Ozeki employs a conspicuous metafictional dialogue between Nao and the reader that acts as a constant reminder that this tale is written for you.

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Kanji for “Being-Time” from Zen Master Dogen’s ‘On Being and Time’ (the Shobogenzo)

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Throughout the book there are themes that are artfully laid out for the reader to learn compassion, to listen, and to slow down, hopefully to better understand themselves and their place in the world. As Ruth and Nao’s worlds edge ever closer together, there is a building suspense that draws the reader in as the passage of time reveals to Ruth bit by bit the account of Nao and her family’s ongoing struggles to understand each other, slowly unveiling the events of their ever expanding timelines.

Packed with philosophy and sardonic humor, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliant thought experiment that delivers simply as an enchanting story for a summer read or a profound book of metaphor realized on multiple levels, and truly anything in between. I’ve come back for a second read recently and found insights and angles that I missed on the first, and I plan on revisiting it again in the future, hopefully for yet more perspectives.

The author discusses her experience writing the book as well as her methods, processes and relationship with writing in general in an interview with Author Magazine’s Bill Kenower here:

Part two of the interview can be viewed here.

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Ripped straight from her bio on her web page, Ozekiland:

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest, whose books have garnered international acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, religion, environmental politics, and global pop culture into unique, hybrid, narrative forms.

Her new(est) novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, published by Viking in September 2021, tells the story of a young boy who, after the death of his father, starts to hear voices and finds solace in the companionship of his very own book.

Her novels, My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), A Tale for the Time Being (2013) and The Book of Form and Emptiness (2022) have been translated and published in over thirty countries. Her third novel, A Tale for the Time Being, won the LA Times Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Book of Form and Emptiness is the winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction as well as the 22nd Annual Massachusetts Book Award, the BC Yukon Book Prize, and the Julia Ward Howe Prize for Fiction.