A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki
A Tale for the Time Being Cover

A Tale for the Time Being

Ann Walker
9/24/2015
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A story within a story of the diary of a teenage Japanese girl. The diary, sealed into a Hello Kitty lunchbox, washes up on to a British Columbia beach, where it is discovered by a Japanese-American writer. The writer, Ruth, becomes fascinated, and then, obsessed. The diary is ostensibly a memoir, written by the girl, Naoko, about her great-grandmother, a hundred-and-four-year-old Buddhist nun, but is mostly about the meaning of life, and death, and purpose, and finding peacefulness. I wasn't sure for a long time why this was a genre novel, until then I found out, and, of course.

(I apologize for all those ridiculous sentences, you should have seen them before I straightened them out.)

I really don't know what else to say about this. If I were a cliché-spouting person (who spent more time than I already do on Tumblr) I would say, "This is getting me in all the FEELS," but it does touch on ideas that are important to me, in an almost breathtaking way. I was thinking about this book while I was in yoga class this morning (I know, I'm supposed to be present in the moment, not thinking about things) but, oh, wow, it all became clear.