Speechless

A Tale For the Time Being
by Ruth Ozeki


Holy cow!  This is one of the best books I've ever read.  And I'm scared to recommend it to any of my friends.

The grim parts are...well...grim.  And gritty and they hurt like hell. Don't be fooled by the beginning. It's going to get real serious real soon. But there's fun, too--Nao's grandmother is a Buddhist monk with a peculiar habit of taking two seeming opposites and making them into "same thing."  When down looks up, up is down.  (I hope I quoted that right--in an audiobook, it's hard to look back.)

The audiobook was read by the author.  At the end she explains that the printed book has footnotes that were impossible to pull into the reading, but by doing the audio she could introduce phrasing and pauses and make us hear the voices she heard in her head as she read every line out loud, during the writing. I approve that. In fact, I'm in love with Ruth Ozeki.