'A Tale For The Time Being' by Ruth Ozeki
‘A tale for the time being’ by Ruth Ozeki fell into my hands at the library, a staff pick. I had read the author’s ‘My year of meat’, a book I loved for its insights into the vastly different cultures of Japan and the United States of America. I picked up ‘A tale for the time being’, read the first page, and I was hooked.
It’s an unusual opening – Nao, one of the narrators, pondering – what is a time being? She reflects on time, on the reader, how the reader’s present (when reading the book) is in her future…
The book has two narrators: Nao, a teenager who used to live in Silicon Valley where her father was successful in the IT world. She now struggles to adjust to her new reality in Tokyo. Her father is depressed and unemployed, her mother away at work. Mercilessly bullied by her classmates she decides to kill herself. Before she does she wants to write the story of her great-grandmother, a 105 year old nun.
The other narrator is Ruth, a writer who moved from Manhattan with her husband to an isolated rainy island in Canada. On a beach walk she has found Nao’s diary. The narration of the book changes from one of those realities to the other.
The book describes the narrators’ lives in detail, taking us into realities often far removed from familiar ‘normal’ lives.
Nao lives in a
‘truly disgusting apartment, and all of our neighbors were bar hostesses who never sorted their recycling and ate take-out bento from 7-Eleven and came home drunk with their dates at five or six in the morning. We used to eat breakfast and listen to them having sex. At first we thought it was tomcats in the alley, and sometimes it was tomcats in the alley, but mostly it was the hostesses, although you could never be certain because they sounded so much alike. Scary.’
Ruth is introduced in a more relatable fashion. In minute detail the reader is introduced to Ruth at her desk:
‘The cat had climbed up onto Ruth’s desk and was preparing to make a strategic incursion onto her lap. She’d been reading the diary when he approached from the side, placing his forepaws on her knees and nudging his nose underneath the spine of the book, pushing it up and out of his way. Once that was done, he settled himself on her lap and started kneading, butting his head into her hand. He was so annoying. Always looking for attention.’
Both Ruth and Nao are outsiders, living mainly in the world of their mind. Nao connects to Jiko, the 105 year old nun, Ruth lives with her husband, an artist and environmentalist who is conscious that his way of thinking is often seen as ‘weird’.
Wherever I open the book now I’m finding nuggets that surprise. The themes include suicide, depression, cultural differences, Zen meditation, the Japanese tsunami and the Second World War, it includes a crow, a nun and a ghost. The descriptions and the details allow me to visualise the environments the protagonists inhabit – enough details to stir my imagination, but not tiresome in ‘too much.’
‘Con-scie-ence. When I search for this word in the dictionary I find that it is from Latin. Con means ‘with’, and science means ‘knowing’. So conscience means ‘with knowing.’
Random thoughts. Nao, Jiko, her great-grandmother, Ruth and her husband Oliver – they think, share their thoughts, and these thoughts are unexpected, thought provoking, random, or, as above, shed a light on a word I’ve used all my life without ever considering its etymology.
Highly recommended. I’d love to read it again – following that expression that you need to read good books twice, once for the story, again for details and focus on the writing. But – there is so little time and so many books to read… I will check out Ruth Ozeki’s second book, ‘All over creation’, instead.