I cared about the characters and how they fared. The story was very engaging in that I found myself glued to it wanting to know what would happen. Interesting cultural and philosophical and generational contrasts.

I loved this book- Not all authors are good readers, but Ruth Ozeki does a marvelous job with this one. 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.įull of Ozeki's signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and listener, 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. A diary is Nao's only solace - and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.Īcross 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. 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.

In Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. '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.' A brilliant, unforgettable, and long-awaited novel from best-selling author Ruth Ozeki

A tale for the time