The Book of Form and Emptiness

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.