The Book of Form and Emptiness

Benny Oh's father dies, and Benny and his mother, Annabelle, are devastated. Benny begins to hear voices of the many things around him while Annabelle clings more and more to the things in her house. Life quickly becomes much, much worse, with Benny unable to function at school and Annabelle in danger of losing her job and her home.

Okay, this is about all I can say about the plot of the story. If you have read Ruth Ozeki before, you know that Ozeki is not a linear writer. The point of view in this book wildly careens from that of a young teenage boy to that of a homeless one-legged poet to that of a lost and lonely mother to that of concrete objects including that of Benny's book itself. The chapters suddenly shift from stories told in the past at the children's section of the library to a present-day riot in the city streets to a mental hospital for young people, with lots of asides for the sharing of Zen philosophy and snow globes and other random thoughts. No doubt it's quirky, and you either delight in this sort of storytelling or you don't. I do, but be prepared that this is 548 pages of the quirkiness of rubber ducks and magnetic poetry and other similar oddities.