The Book of Form and Emptiness
2021 • 548 pages
Ratings21
Average rating4
15
Ratings21
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
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.
(I'm in the minority here. My notes here are purely for my own purposes, for future recollection. They are not intended to sway you toward or against reading it, and you should, because everyone says it's great).
It did not work for me. I tried, and kept trying, off and on over three months. Finally finished it in a solid push: yet another book this year that I wish I had DNF'ed. I just found it cringeworthy. The little boy evoked more pity than compassion. I sort of rooted for him, but he wasn't interesting enough to actually care much about. His mother, though, not even that. I found her banal, a soulless waste of space, and am admitting that because I realize how poorly that reflects on me. I was fully aware of this failing of mine, actively curious about it, trying to find a way to develop compassion for her. No luck. That may be the book's lesson for me: I have much work to do to become a kinder person.
There were interesting characters but it was never clear to me why they chose to invest their time in the kid and his mother — nor how. Serendipitous encounters galore, so many that I just learned-helplessnessly accepted them by midway: okay, right, small world, again. If there was mention of an Infinite Improbability Drive, I missed it.
Sweet in many ways, well intentioned, but obviously intended for an audience that is not me.
A fantastically well crafted story that blends contemporary realism (mental health, neurodiversity, grief, poverty, inequality, politics, authority) and spiritual insight, with lashings of knowing literary and philosophical references. Somehow it's fun and entertaining whilst also being heartwrenchingly real. It walks the tightrope of drama well, always hopeful and grounded, without plunging into despair, even while our charcters themselves may be wavering.
I loved the really obvious & playful allusions to Marie Kondo & Slavoj Zizek, and to writer Ruth Ozeki herself (the typing woman in the library). Just when it feels it's teetering into didactic pontification, the cleverness of the narrative device slips in. The beauty of the different narrative voices changing and challenging throughout the story is a great metaphor for Benny's auditory hallucinations, bildungsroman, and progress towards integration and wellbeing.
The insight into the nexus of the health, housing, employment, consumerism, public services was not quite gritty or revaltory but I've never read such a realistic, insider perspective in fictional form that was this accessible in communicating to readers how these systems compound to fail those struggling.
It has an earnestness to it that's simultaneously a little cringe & clumsy, but brilliant in its warmth, and poetic in its vision. A little like Annabelle, a little like The Bottleman Slavoj, a little like Aikon. I guess they're ultimately all parts of Ozeki herself.
