A Tale for the Time Being

Here's the plot: An author with writer's block who lives on a remote island with her husband who is ill finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox that has floated up onto the beach. Inside are an antique watch, a package of old letters in French and the diary of a Japanese teenaged girl.

A Tale for the Time Being was on a list of books recommended as mood-boosting, but it took me a long time (a long, long time) to get to the mood-boosting parts. The Japanese teen is suicidal and her father is suicidal. The author is unhappy and her husband is unhappy. The writer of the old letters is suffering terribly.

I'd put the books at 90% pain and suffering and 10% happiness, and maybe that's a good ratio for most of life. It's a clever and surprising story with deeply real characters, an astonishingly good read.