A Tale for the Time Being

I was given this to review.
I'd already read a book by Ruth Ozeki that I really liked http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/917346.All_Over_Creation
and so I had high hopes for this one. It didn't start too well though, two different voices, and neither seemed to speak to me. One a teenage girl sitting in cafe in Tokyo writing a diary and the other a japanese-american woman reading the diary she's found on the beach, on an island in British Colombia.
Her writing is simple, uncomplicated but this is deceptive and as the strands of the story weave together and the layers are built up the characters deepened and I became hooked.
She made me think of Barbara Kingsolver in her realism and Haruki Murakami in her dreamy mystical resonances.
Recommended.