![]() The book is constructed around a pair of interlocking narratives - Nao’s diary, which is really more of an extended suicide note, and the story of Ruth, a novelist who lives on Vancouver Island and one day finds washed up on the beach a package containing the diary and other artifacts. But even more, Ozeki’s move telegraphs that the book is going to play with our preconceptions, that it will shift on us, turn on us, that it will be as difficult to pin down as a wisp of smoke.Īll of that is true of “A Tale for the Time Being,” which is why (let’s not be coy) it’s such an exquisite novel: funny, tragic, hard-edged and ethereal at once. ![]() ![]() The point, of course, is that we are all more than one person, one perspective, that identity is in a constant state of flux. I bet you’re wondering what kind of stupid girl would write words like that.” There is a section break, and when Nao returns, she is tougher, far more pointed. Yet just as we start to wonder what we’re getting into, Ozeki flips the whole thing around. The language is excitable, breathless even: “f you decide to read on,” Nao exclaims, “then guess what? You’re my kind of time being and together we’ll make magic!” ![]() Forgoing context or explanation, she plunges us into the diary of a 16-year-old Japanese girl named Nao. Ruth Ozeki opens her third novel, “A Tale for the Time Being,” with a small deception - or, more accurately, a sleight of hand. ![]()
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