A Tale for the Time Being

By: Ruth Ozeki

Narrated by: Ruth Ozeki

Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Short-listed, Man Booker International Prize

A brilliant, unforgettable, and long-awaited novel from best-selling author Ruth Ozeki

"A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be."

In Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century. A diary is Nao's only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao's drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki's signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and listener, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

©2013 Ruth Ozeki (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“An exquisite novel: funny, tragic, hard-edged and ethereal at once.”—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“As contemporary as a Japanese teenager’s slang but as ageless as a Zen koan, Ruth Ozeki’s new novel combines great storytelling with a probing investigation into the purpose of existence. . . . She plunges us into a tantalizing narration that brandishes mysteries to be solved and ideas to be explored. . . . Ozeki’s profound affection for her characters makes A Tale for the Time Being as emotionally engaging as it is intellectually provocative.”—The Washington Post

“A delightful yet sometimes harrowing novel . . . Many of the elements of Nao’s story—schoolgirl bullying, unemployed suicidal ‘salarymen,’ kamikaze pilots—are among a Western reader’s most familiar images of Japan, but in Nao’s telling, refracted through Ruth’s musings, they become fresh and immediate, occasionally searingly painful. Ozeki takes on big themes . . . all drawn into the stories of two ‘time beings,’ Ruth and Nao, whose own fates are inextricably bound.”—The New York Times Book Review

This book will get you.

I first read the physical version of this book and wasn't ready to let go. So I got the audiobook. It was perfect. This book unexpectedly changed me. Ruth narrates perfectly, seeing as she wrote it so she knows the exact way to do it. If you're looking for a soul book that addresses basically everything including family, class, death, coming of age, culture, very under-stated comedy, and even pet-love, this one's it.

A slow burn full of great detail and wonder

Although I wish some of the big questions that fill the end of the book could have been explored more thoroughly throughout, this book makes for an interesting read. It feels like a real book in that you are carried on a journey through character observation and discovery, keeping you invested in what will be the many reveals of truth.

This novel is a work of art.

Beautifully narrated by the Author.
I have just finished listening and I can feel the presence of the words and at the same time their absence.

You have inspired me Ruth Ozeki and I thank you infinitely.

love ozeki books

great book, very much enjoyed this story. book of form and emptiness, her book after this one is also great. ł love her writing style

Utterly beautiful,

This one stays with you. The trials of young Nao, as well as the diary-within-the-diary of her Great Uncle, the doomed philosopher/kamikaze pilot, were wholly original narratives for me, I was captivated by Ozeki’s artistry chapter after exquisitely crafted chapter, and I appreciated her nuanced and authentic voice performance.

A masterpiece I won’t forget!

Absolutely brilliant- the story, the writing, the structure, the performance. There was nothing I did not like. I rarely read a more than once but this one I will start again tomorrow!

Exceptional narration enhanced story

This is a story that weaves into your consciousness like Heartworms or spring. The narrator brings to life the protagonists and captures dialects, genders, and age with flawless craft. Makes me think about what it means to share this experience as time beings.

Extraordinary Effort

Ordinarily I do not like to hear an author read his/her own books. Almost always they come across as emotionless and wooden, and one cannot help but wonder why in the world wouldn't a professional WRITER delegate the narration to a professional READER? This is not the case with this book. Ruth Ozeki's reading skills rival that of any I have ever heard. She definitely improves on her written words with her spoken words. Actually I cannot imagine anyone doing a better job than she.
It would seem that the Ruth in this book is the alter-ego of the author, who is drawn to some flotsam on the beach where she finds, among other artifacts, a diary protected within some plastic freezer bags. It soon becomes apparent the diary came from Japan, and although unlikely, possibly from the devastating tsunami of 2011. The diary was written by a Japanese teenager, Nao (not a coincidence that the pronunciation is "Now") who was contemplating suicide. Nao speaks to her reader across an ocean of water and time, and Ruth is drawn deeper into Nao's life. A captivating connection is made between the two through the girl's story, in spite of the chasm of time and space.
This is truly an elegant, lovely, poignant and thought-provoking novel and Ruth Ozeki has proven she is a brilliant author AND narrator. Highly recommended.

Mesmerizing

Any additional comments?

I haven't read Ruth Ozeki's first book, "My Year of Meats," but I certainly will now. Her writing is beautiful and completely engaging.

Although the first few moments of the book had me wondering about what I had gotten myself into as Nao introduced herself in her diary, but I kept going and I am really glad that I did. Nao and Ruth (the other main character--named for the book's author?) are both sympathetic and interesting characters. They are both struggling through hard situations in their lives and trying to figure out whether to make it through or to just give up. When fate connects them through the discovery of Nao's diary sealed inside a Hello Kitty lunch box inside a barnacled plastic bag that Ruth "happens" to find on the coast of Canada, their lives and stories become intertwined in interesting and surreal ways. The connection between Ruth as Nao's reader and Nao as Ruth's storyteller bridges both geographical distance as well as time.

I was sorry to reach the end of the story but very glad to have particpated in it--as a reader you definitely feel that you are part of what is happening as Ruth is part of what she reads from Nao's diary. In the end, the story, like the characters, seems to open up more possibilities than to close them and, as the reader, I knew this was a good thing--for everyone.

it was wonderfully written but hard to read

it was an excellent book and it was well written. but I'm in a period of my life where I am increasingly disgusted about the vile behaviors of some mankind. it was very difficult to read about the abuse of the school girl and the soldier. it's bad enough that it's even possible much less to have it reimagined and have to read about it. I wish those images were not in my mind. and I wish people that can be guilty of such abuse were washed from the world. or perhaps I'm just ready to die (to be washed from the world myself) so that I don't have to deal with the knowledge of its evil anymore. there was plenty of that sentiment in this book: two people fixated on suicide. the only light in the book is the hundred and four year old who clearly chose life but one cloistered from the world as a monk. lots of material for Thought here.