For starters, just let me lay it out here: Writing about books I've read is not an easy task. It looked so simple when I skimmed through book reviews in the newspapers or various magazines. A job from heaven! Spend an afternoon reading a book, great or otherwise, plop down in front of the computer, and tell everyone about it. What could be hard? What could be hard!?! Well, so far, just about everything! But, I'm determined to stick with this project--sink or swim. Being nearly 70 and in the midst of a self-improvement program performed in public--well, as public as this little blog gets--should certainly encourage everyone who passes by to get their stuff together before they're too old! It's not going to get any easier. Think of this as a public service. Amen.
Now to the Book: This month's Book Club selection, A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, might have left me cold if I hadn't actually been on this little self-improvement journey. But, since I am, portions of it really grabbed hold. For me, this is a complex book, busy, and fairly long. But, I think it's one you could read every year and find new personal insights, new meanings to the story, and a deeper appreciation for its nuances as you continue to move through the "now" moments in your own life.
The premise of A Tale... (sort of) is this: Ruth, a blocked novelist living with her husband on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, is strolling along the beach one day and finds a sealed plastic bag which contains a Hello Kitty lunch box, a diary, other papers and a wrist watch. The bag is nearly buried under a pile of trash, and she assumes her find has originated in Japan and drifted into Desolation Sound with other debris from the March 2011 Tsunami. She's a bit mystified, as hers is a secluded beach, and doesn't often receive ocean trash.
She carries the bag home, begins to look through it, and discovers that the undated diary she finds in the sealed bag belongs to a Japanese teenager named Nao (pronounced now.) Think on that. Nao lives in Tokyo (or did at the time the diary was written) and comes across with the typical teenage voice--sassy, breezy, self-centered. She's world-weary (aren't most teenage girls?) but Nao's weariness comes with grit. She's dealing with a life that's much too serious for any 16 year old. Raised in California, she was moved back to Japan when the Dot Com bubble burst and her father lost his tech job. She's being bullied at school; her father is attempting, but never quite achieving, suicide; her mother is vaguely distant; and the family is destitute.
That's only a bare raw outline. Page by page we're drawn into Nao and Ruth's increasingly intertwined lives (they alternate chapters). The number of characters grows, and each plays an integral part in the narrative but I felt like each was simply hovering in the background. Always watching, always aware, always necessary, but a little gray. For example, the Japanese crow, 6,000 miles from his native habitat, who simply appears one day on Ruth and Oliver's forested property. Soon, however, the crow may be signalling Ruth, but so subtly she doesn't quite know if it's real.
Nao's Great-Grandmother, Jiko, the 104 year-old Zen Buddhist nun, novelist, anarchist, and feminist is in and out of A Tale... from beginning to end. We don't meet her until a later chapter, but we know that if anyone can, or will protect Nao and Ruth, it will be Jiko working through time, space, and other beings. And, don't miss Haruki #1, Jiko's son and Nao's late uncle. He was a philosophy student conscripted in 1943 (most unwillingly) into the Japanese air-force as a Kamikaze pilot. His fate then is is of prime importance now. There are other characters, of course, but, whew, that's enough for today.
In the process, we learn a little about Buddhism, Zen meditation, but, primarily, the overarching need for communication and honesty and feeling and holding others close.
I'm afraid I may not be deep enough either to read this book, or to write about it, but I enjoyed it tremendously and always looked forward to picking it up again after I'd reluctantly laid it down. And, really, "deep" may not be the issue. I think that reading A Tale...requires an open mind. An acceptance of everyday mysteries, slightly different points of view and a belief that we're all in this world together, and while cultures may clash, the people within them don't have to.
All in all--Two Thumbs Up! And for any of you high-minded folk, A Tale For the Time Being was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Enjoy!
Margie
margiestaggs44@gmail.com
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