Ratings32
Average rating4
WINNER OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION NATIONAL BESTSELLER A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
A book with a story told from the perspective of a book. I think that sums up some of my frustrations with this book - it tries hard to be clever and meta but ends up just being weird and nonsensical. Our main characters are suffering from mental health disorders - the mother is an obsessive hoarder and the son hears objects talking to him. How much of this is real is left very much up to the reader to determine. In the end, I found the characters strange and annoying. The basic concepts and ideas were interesting enough, and the way that these mental issues creep up on you as a result of external factors was well realized, but the characters themselves just were not interesting or engaging enough for me. The meandering prose and structure really did not help me either.
I am sure there are going to be plenty of people who enjoy this kind of thing, but this was not for me
forty-seven bazillionty stars out of five; lifetime book; life experiences I thought were unique fully, painfully and accurately reflected, artfully articulated, gahhh. I almost want to say don't read it bc if you don't like it or can't relate I honestly don't even want to know.
cw for librarians as de facto community mental health workers themes
And +1 (6 stars).
Ruth Ozeki is awesome.
I loved “A Tale of Time Being” too.
Characters, flow, depth and breadth of topics, questions raised, language...
All pretty awesome imho.
The end seemed fast forwarded compared to the rest of the book and some topics sounded too serious and important not to go deeper but all accepted. All fits. All flows.
One of those “I couldn't put it down” books.