A Tale for the Time Being
2013 • 422 pages
Ratings56
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings56
Average rating4.1
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, she plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century. A diary is Nao's only solace. Across the Pacific a novelist living on a remote island discovers artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox and is pulled into Nao's drama and her unknown fate. (Bestseller)
Reviews with the most likes.
3.5 stars. This book is a strange, funny, fantastical journey. It's quite good, but not my favorite in terms of style or delivery.
Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle
A dual-strand narrative with a difference – some may find the ending too cutesy-weird, but it was of a piece with the rest. Dark and involving, ultimately a narrative of liberation that brings to the fore the creative role of the reader as well as the writer. When ARE we going to get to read Jiko's life story? That's what I'd really like to know.
Wavered between 4 or 5 stars. Not a perfect book, but it has so many interesting layers and events that turn to out to be connected: suicide, Buddhism, the dot-com bubble burst, the 2011 tsunami, WWII, a diary that triggers it all off (still not sure how the diary traveled from Japan to the PNW, but just went with it). This book was suggested for the “Read a book wherein all point-of-view characters are people of color” category, and seems suitable as the two main POV characters are Japanese.
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