The novel switches back and forth between Ruth and Nao, and while I generally didn’t have any issues with Ruth, I was always in a hurry to get back to Nao. However, Ruth decides to read the journal at a slow pace, basically only reading as much as she thinks Nao wrote as a time so there is lot of switching back and forth between the two characters. Ruth’s sections discuss much about the impact of globalism and climate change on the environment which I […]
What is now? What is the story of now/Nao?
For the Time Being has two parallel narratives: Nao is a teenager in Japan, writing a journal that she states is her suicide note; and Ruth, a writer in an island off British Columbia, who has found Nao’s journal, along with some letters and other artifacts, washed ashore. As Ruth reads Nao’s diary, we find out Nao’s story: she lived most of her childhood in Sunnyvale, California while her father worked at a dotcom, and upon returning to Japan, she did not fit in. Her classmates […]
A Tale for the Time Being
A Tale for the Time Being is a novel about Zen Buddhism, quantum physics, writers and readers, writer’s block and reader’s block, hate and love. It moves fluidly through the past and present and involves some dynamic and admirable female protagonists. Small wonder it was nominated for the 2013 Man Booker Prize (and should have won instead of The Luminaries). The narration moves back and forth between Ruth, a present-day middle-aged writer living on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, and Nao, […]
The Future is Nao
Well. I was dreading reading this book. While Ozeki may have made history by being the first ever Buddhist monk to make the Booker shortlist, the synopsis of this novel didn’t exactly make me fall over myself to read it. In Tokyo, a sixteen year old girl, Nao, is so horribly bullied and feels so low and alone that she decides to end her life. Before doing so, she wants to write a diary chronicling the life of her great grandmother, a 104 year old […]