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 […]
What is now? What is the story of now/Nao?
For the Time Being has two parallel narratives: Nao is a teenager in Japan, writing a journal that she states is her suicide note; and Ruth, a writer in an island off British Columbia, who has found Nao’s journal, along with some letters and other artifacts, washed ashore. As Ruth reads Nao’s diary, we find out Nao’s story: she lived most of her childhood in Sunnyvale, California while her father worked at a dotcom, and upon returning to Japan, she did not fit in. Her classmates […]
A Tale for the Time Being
A Tale for the Time Being is a novel about Zen Buddhism, quantum physics, writers and readers, writer’s block and reader’s block, hate and love. It moves fluidly through the past and present and involves some dynamic and admirable female protagonists. Small wonder it was nominated for the 2013 Man Booker Prize (and should have won instead of The Luminaries). The narration moves back and forth between Ruth, a present-day middle-aged writer living on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia, and Nao, […]