A Tale for the Time Being

The first thing that has to be said about award-winning Ruth Ozeki's book, A Tale for the Time Being is wow! This is truly a heart touching and inspiring book that I found hard to put down.

The book is written in two parts. One is the diary of Nao, a 16-year-old Japanese girl in Tokyo, who wishes to end her life, and the other, across the Pacific is Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island. Ruth discovers the diary and other artefacts, washed ashore in a Hello kitty lunchbox. The diary is Nao's solace and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

This book holds such beauty. From the tales recounted by Nao of her 104-year-old great Grandmother, old Jiko a Zen Buddhist nun to Nao's hardships, when a time in her life becomes so over run with ijime, known to you and me as bullying, that suicide becomes an option.

As a counterpoint to all this, we have Ruth who acts as the cipher for our intepretations of Nao's life and experiences. It is as if you are reading Nao's diary together, sharing thoughts, and only hoping that she can find any information on this girl after the 2011 Tsunami hit Japan.

I cannot give this book enough praise; it is truly brilliant and definitely unforgettable. Its story will stay with me forever!