A tale for the time being by Ruth Ozeki

Aching loneliness is what pushes Nao to write in her journal but what follows is a tale of the black-and-white era, juxtaposed with an alternate colorful timeline! Also, it brilliantly fed my appetite for psychological fiction. :)

I picked this book on a very close friend's recommendation and can't be thankful enough that I went ahead with it. I bought it on my kindle and didn't put it down for two days! It is easily one of the most gripping books I have read in recent times. The fascinating angles of quantum physics and Zen beliefs make the book all the more intriguing.

“In essence, everything in the entire universe is intimately linked with each other as moments in time, continuous and separate.”

I am at a loss of words to describe a book that has so much depth. There are two narrators of the book - Ruth and Nao - alternating between chapters. It is one book that has so much going on from quantum physics to Buddhist philosophy to the passage of time. The story keeps you on the edge throughout the book in anticipation of what will unfold the next - mostly it will be nothing you had imagined.

I loved the part of Nao and it felt so real, almost as if I was standing there being a spectator to her story. Nao, a sixteen-year-old girl Japanese American girl starts to journal at a whim and what follows are a series of consequences that are intertwined with the life of Ruth, a Japanese American writer living on a remote island off British Colombia.

The open interpretations of ‘time being’, which is the present moment that all beings embrace and is also, according to the zen philosophy, ‘uji’ (time (ji) itself already is none other than being(s) and (u) are all none other than time).

Why in the world would Nao’s diary, in which she has poured her soul, end up in Ruth’s hand? And does the association go back or in the future?

Is it the main character telling her own story? Who is the main character? Have you ever stumbled across a diary washed down on a beach?

It is compelling, historical, layered and humorous, with deep undertones of spirituality. Ozeki kind of summarizes the gist of her book through a quote by Proust, “In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self.”