The Book of Form and Emptiness

A Novel

By: Ruth Ozeki

Narrated by: Kerry Shale, Ruth Ozeki

Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction

“No one writes like Ruth Ozeki—a triumph.”—Matt Haig, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library

“Inventive, vivid, and propelled by a sense of wonder.”—TIME

“If you’ve lost your way with fiction over the last year or two, let The Book of Form and Emptiness light your way home.”—David Mitchell, Booker Prize-finalist author of Cloud Atlas

A boy who hears the voices of objects all around him; a mother drowning in her possessions; and a Book that might hold the secret to saving them both—the brilliantly inventive new novel from the Booker Prize-finalist Ruth Ozeki

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki—bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.

©2021 Ruth Ozeki (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“[A] Borgesian, Zen Buddhist parable of consumerism . . . [Ozeki] endows objects and animals with anima, the breath of life . . . [she] ensouls the world . . . There’s powerful magic here . . . Ozeki is unusually patient with her characters, even the rebarbative ones, and she is able to record the subtle peculiarities of other classes of beings that more overeager writers would probably miss . . . Ozeki gives us a metaphor for our very own American consumption disorder, our love-hate relationship with the stuff we produce and can’t let go of.”—New York Times Book Review

“A masterful meditation on consumer culture . . . This novel’s meditative pacing perfectly suits its open-hearted contemplation. The book’s self-awareness allows it to comically hedge and tiptoe, to digress into diatribes into the ‘false dichotomies and hegemonic hierarchies of materialist colonizers’ only to catch itself and sheepishly apologize: ‘Sorry. That turned into a rant. No reader likes a rant. As a book, we should know better.’ The Book of Form and Emptiness is concerned foremost with the outsiders in our world, the ones who hear voices, who are friendless, who fall into addiction and self-harm. It’s concerned, too, with the ultimate outsiders, the objects that we produce and discard, produce and discard. It is both profound and fun, a loving indictment of our consumer culture. As the novel asks the reader turning the pages, ‘has it ever occurred to you that books have feelings, too?’”—USA Today

“[A] tale of sorrow, danger and tentative redemption serves as the springboard for extended meditations on the interdependence of all beings, the magic of books, the disastrous ecological and spiritual effects of unchecked consumerism and more . . . one of Ozeki’s gifts as a novelist is the ability to enfold provocative intellectual material within a human story grounded in sharply observed social detail . . . The Book itself has a marvelous voice: adult, ironic, affirming at every turn the importance of books as a repository of humanity’s deepest wisdom and highest aspirations.”—Washington Post

Masterful writing

I can't express how much I like this book. It's broad and deep, the characters are well drawn, and the plot is enticing.
Annabelle's voice didn't work for me at first, as it didn't seem to match her character. After getting more into the story, it does make sense. This is a small thing and shouldn't stop anyone from exploring this book.

Hard to listen to

The narrator was great until he did voices for characters especially the main characters. It is so well written such vivid scenes. Very sad book but is still hopeful. Characters well developed.

Contemporary Buddhist healing fairy tale reinterprets mental illness as compassion

This Buddhist reinterpretation of someone who hears voices takes us from the Western psychological perspective of schizophrenia in a dead world to having the healing empathy of Quan Yin in an animated world. What is real? is the central inquiry and it is an essential cultural and human question. I loved each of the characters and the their journeys of awakening after tragedy. The idea that our own book is talking to us and sorting out the voices of mind from the voice of truth was so important to me. I am grateful to the author for her wisdom.

Narrator voices are not well done

Unfortunately the narrator’s choice of voices for the many different characters ( especially female) are very poor and very distractive. Fortunately the story overrides the problem

Mind over Matter

If it weren't for the brilliance of Ruth Ozeki and her intuition I would have stopped listening to the book early on. The voices of the characters were horrible. The accent of Connie the librarian indecipherable, the voice of Annabelle cringey and the voice of Benny whiney. Who allowed that to happen??? When the reader was not butchering the characters with their voices and just reading the story he was tolerable.

Creative and beautiful!

I loved this book! It was so fantastically creative and unexpected! I was sad it ended.

Really good story

I enjoyed this book very much. I agree with most people that the female voices were so exaggerated it almost felt like the narrator was mocking women. Still a good listen

one opinion

The story was interesting and moved along nicely. The portrayal of women's voices was irritating.

Wieldy, hard, loaded with cries

This book is a zen Buddhist story of Life through the cries of a mother and son after the death of Kenji, Japanese born clarinetist, husband and father, alcoholic, smoker of marihuana, and caring, funny , beloved Human. May he rest in peace and be reborn to bring us more stories!

I have to agree with some other reviewers

I love Ruth Ozeki, and I liked this book a lot, but the narrator is just not good. His voices for the characters, especially the main characters Annabelle and Benny, were embarrassing and annoying. It didn't ruin the book for me - I was able to put up with it - but it did detract from my enjoyment of it. Some of his accents were OK, some of them were really bad and/or really inconsistent, e.g. Cory the Librarian - I *think* he was going for a Jamaican accent but it was really hard to tell.

Otherwise, I love Ozeki's blending of great characters (both human and other) that you grow to really care about, a story where the stakes are very high, and the way she brings in Buddhist and (I think) Shinto ideas. Two of my fave characters, and who I thought Kerry Shale actually did well with were the poet/hobo Slavaj (I may have his name spelled wrong. It's an audiobook...haven't seen it printed) and the Aleph. Overall, if you can stand the narrator, you'll enjoy this book. Do give the sample a listen before you buy.