Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home. Within it lies a diary that expresses the hopes and dreams of a young girl. She suspects it might have arrived on a drift of debris from the 2011 tsunami. With every turn of the page, she is sucked deeper into an enchanting mystery. In a small cafe in Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao Yasutani is navigating the challenges thrown up by modern life. In the face of cyber-bullying, the mysteries of a 104-year-old Buddhist nun and great-grandmother, and the joy and heartbreak of family, Nao is trying to find her own place - and voice - through a diary she hopes will find a reader and friend who finally understands her.
Weaving across continents and decades, and exploring the relationship between reader and writer, fact and fiction, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.
***
[Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being]***
(@canongatebooks, 11 March 2013, 14 hours 43 minutes, audiobook, #popsugarreadingchallenge 2020, a book set in japan host of the 2020 Olympics, bought from @audibleuk)
***
***
I've become a huge fan of Japanese literature over the past few years. There's something I really enjoy about it. It takes risks that UK and US fiction falls a little short of. A Tale for the Time Being is no exception. I enjoyed this so much I listened to the audiobook at work as well because I had to know what was happening. This is a big, complex, beast of a book. Ozeki uses a non-linear storyline with the story moving back and forth between Ruth, who finds Nao's Hello Kitty bag on a beach and Nao, a teenage girl struggling to fit in after being forced to leave the US and return to Tokyo completely disconnected from the culture and language who uncovers her families fascinating past. Nao's chapters also weave in and out of time. The book goes through so many time shifts it soon becomes pointless trying to work out a timeline. I just went along with it. This book is amazing.
