Ruth is a Novelist with writer’s block living on a Canadian island with her husband Oliver. One day a mysterious diary washes up on the shore, a diary from a Japanese school girl called Nao. Nao is obsessed with time and she explores this as she writes in her journal, attempting to capture her grandmother’s story. It is to be the last thing Nao does before she leaves this place, suicide runs in the family you see. Ruth starts reading this journal and becomes absorbed […]
When a barnacle covered bag washes ashore on a small island in British Columbia, Ruth is immediately drawn into the narrative of Nao, a 16-year-old from an ocean away in Tokyo, Japan. Nao lived with her parents in California, where Silicon Valley and the California sun held nothing but hope and happiness for the Japanese family. But her father’s job loss returned Nao’s family to Japan, where she went from happy well-adjusted teenager, to a bullied outcast. Escaping the constant pinching, stalking, and even fake […]
Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey…Stuff.
Last March, I read ElCicco’s review of A Tale for the Time Being and thought to myself, that sounds interesting! A few weeks later I happened to be in my favorite local indie bookstore and saw it sitting on the shelf. It was spring break, I had some time off work and school, why not enjoy a good book? Well, the fact that I just finished it about two weeks ago probably tells you what I thought about the book. I wanted to like it. I […]
“To be or not to be, that is the question”
The novel switches back and forth between Ruth and Nao, and while I generally didn’t have any issues with Ruth, I was always in a hurry to get back to Nao. However, Ruth decides to read the journal at a slow pace, basically only reading as much as she thinks Nao wrote as a time so there is lot of switching back and forth between the two characters. Ruth’s sections discuss much about the impact of globalism and climate change on the environment which I […]