Ruth Ozeki‘s “A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING”
Book review by Dennis D. McDonald
I’m no stranger to science fiction tales that focus on time travel or alternate universes. Those aspects of Ozeki’s novel don’t seem outlandish to me.
What is fascinating about A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING is how ambitious author Ozeki is in combining so many disparate elements in one book. For the most part she succeeds in tying together a large number of elements that in the real world are usually thematically, temporally, and geographically separate.
But this is fiction and I’m reluctant to classify it as science fiction. It’s all very clever even if sometimes the cleverness threatens to overwhelm the story. At times I just wanted to find out what comes next. Sometimes Ozeki’s imagination seemed to get in the way.
Basically, I was much more interested in 16-year-old Nao in Japan and her trials and tribulations — which are very serious — than I was in Ruth, the tortured soul of an author who lives on a remote island in Canada with an equally remote husband.
Yes, Ozeki connects the two in ways that are both entertaining and clever. But the reader often sees the author behind the curtain pulling the story levers. It’s almost impossible to ignore how those clever and sometimes distracting lever mechanics are working.
Still, this is a fun and engrossing read, especially when you listen to the audio version narrated by the author herself. Her rendering of the voices of 16-year-old Nao versus middle aged Ruth, along with frequent Japanese and French quotations, makes this book a very special and entertaining brew. Add in the references to Zen Buddhism, the multiverse, Japanese Kamikaze pilot training, a Hello Kitty lunchbox, and a shaman-like crow, and you have a really interesting read. Recommended.
Review copyright © 2022 by Dennis D. McDonald