The Book of Form and Emptiness
Ratings50
Average rating4
Full review here
For the last few months, I've been traveling with nothing more than a backpack, and with space at such a premium, printed books were the first thing that had to go. But the months bore down on me and I missed the texture of the pages on my fingertips, the smell of ink, and most importantly the strange comfort and familiarity that one develops with the book's physical presence. I thought back to my home library, bookshelves overflowing with literary relationships I've built over the years, and I caved: I found the nearest English-language book store in Tokyo to find my next read.
There in the stacks, I come upon Ruth Ozeki's The Book of Form & Emptiness. The “form and emptiness” reference first piqued my curiousity, a reference to the Heart Sutra and perhaps the most revered line in the Zen lineage (of which Ozeki is a priest):
[F]orm does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this.
The Book
If anything, I would argue that her compassion is also one of the book's greatest weaknesses. By the end of the novel, characters have truly been put through the ringer: Benny has been pulled into participating in a riot and is checked into the psychiatric ward, the Aleph has relapsed and given in to her addictions, and Annabelle has been fired and is unwilling to clean her home, putting her on the edge of eviction. Things are by all means looking bleak. At this point, The Book steps in and attempts to offer a little dose of reality to Benny as he sits mute in his hospital room:
We don't want to upset you or make you feel guilty. It's not out of malice that we're telling you about Annabelle's suffering. We're telling you because, as your book, that's our job. And even if we'd prefer to spin you pretty fairy tales and tell tidy stories with happily-ever-afters, we can't. We have to be real, even if it hurts, and that's your doing.
I read this passage and expected each of these characters to get absolutely thrown into the blender.
But here is where I think the book begins to collapse under its own weight. That bit above comes from page 528 of a 546 page novel. We're practically at the finish line here, this whole grand world that Ozeki has spun pulled tight, and yet this whole drama gives in to exactly that which it claims not to be: things end happily-ever-after. Benny literally just gets up out his chair and asks to leave, and they basically let him go. Annabelle basically hauls ass and cleans up the house, the psychiatrist who essentially instigated the entire Child Protective Services call does a 180 and vouches for them, “No-Good” Harold gets overruled by his mother who owns the building and the eviction saga comes swiftly to an end. And things end up neat and tidy . For all the preaching about taking responsibility, it doesn't truly seem as if any of the characters actually learned to be responsible for their own suffering.
I have a variety of other quibbles about the novel: the Aleph is a bit of too much of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl for my taste, the whole story of Aikon is completely unnecessary, and in general most of the side characters were fairly flat. However, the fact that I was enthralled for 400 pages only to feel so rushed at the end is what hit me the hardest.
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.
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.
Bit of a slow start that sometimes felt a little twee, but it ended up winning me over.
Benny Oh is 13 when his father dies lying drunk in the alley, mistaken for garbage, and run over by a chicken truck. It upends his small family's life. Benny begins to hear objects — the anxious buzz of fluorescent lights, the screaming of coffee beans, the arrogant chatter of coins. Meanwhile his mother Annabelle can't stop seeing the potential in things — old shirts that can become a quilt, the promise of potential in a Michaels store, the perfect world contained in the snow globes bought on eBay. But their relationships to objects is a bit broken. Benny can't shut out the malevolent insistence of scissors and plunges them into his leg and Annabelle becomes a full blown hoarder.
It's up to Benny and the Book, the one the reader is holding in his hands, breaking the literary fourth wall and speaking to us, to unravel the story. It's one that involves the library, a recovering drug addict named The Aleph, a wheelchair bound Slovakian poet known as the Bottleman, ferret sky burials, a backyard murder of crows, a Marie Kondo stand-in and the pervasive question of what is real.
There's a lot going on here, wild digressions, unresolved questions, weird meanderings that render the whole thing a bit shaggy but it is ultimately a hopeful book suffused with Zen sensibility.
This is the second book in a row in which I was lured into reading the book by an interview with the author. I first read Ruth Ozeki's “My Year of Meats” almost 25 years ago and really liked it, so I didn't need much of an excuse to pick up another book of hers. And a book about books, at that.
The premise is a good one. I won't recap the plot, but will say that the promise of the premise isn't delivered. In fact, I was really bored and found myself not caring, ultimately deciding not to continue around 1/3 through.
I think Ruth Ozeki might be one of the best writers of our time. A tale for the time being is a favorite of mine and I was really excited to read the book of form and emptiness. It is just as beautifully written, it is a great story with amazing characters but it just didn't speak to my soul the way A tale for the the time being did. I'm not sure if it's my own headspace or something lacking in the book but I struggled through reading this even though everything about the book is perfect. I'm so glad I finished it and would recommend it to anyone but I strangely never fell in love.
Ruth Ozeki is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. The book is one of the best I have read and I feel that this one will will stick with me for some time. It is very similar to feel, tone, and themes as A Tale for the Time Being. I think these are is the same literary universe and could be companion books. Ms. Ozeki understands readers and know that each book is different with each reader. People may read the same words but come away with very different feelings and understandings. I loved this book.
Basically the story is of Benny Oh. His father was killed in a freak accident and soon after he begins to hear voices from different object. The main on being a book. The book of Benny. It is also about his mother Annabelle who become a hoarder. Each deals with their own mental issues separately.
I really felt of these characters as well as the secondary characters. They are so well written and complex but also easy to understand you can see yourself in this story with them.
I loved the book and I hope you give it a try. Perhaps the book is not for you. But that is okay as books have a life and perhaps this one may fall to the bottom of the pile on your nightstand. It will be sad. Don't make this book sad.
Ruth Ozeki is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. The book is one of the best I have read and I feel that this one will will stick with me for some time. It is very similar to feel, tone, and themes as A Tale for the Time Being. I think these are is the same literary universe and could be companion books. Ms. Ozeki understands readers and know that each book is different with each reader. People may read the same words but come away with very different feelings and understandings. I loved this book.
Basically the story is of Benny Oh. His father was killed in a freak accident and soon after he begins to hear voices from different object. The main on being a book. The book of Benny. It is also about his mother Annabelle who become a hoarder. Each deals with their own mental issues separately.
I really felt of these characters as well as the secondary characters. They are so well written and complex but also easy to understand you can see yourself in this story with them.
I loved the book and I hope you give it a try. Perhaps the book is not for you. But that is okay as books have a life and perhaps this one may fall to the bottom of the pile on your nightstand. It will be sad. Don't make this book sad.
While I found the writing lovely, this was a very slow-moving trek. I thought the device of using the book as a narrator was interesting, but am not sure it always worked as well as the author intended. I did ultimately enjoy it, but don't think this novel will be for everyone.
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
(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.
Benny Oh's father dies, and Benny and his mother, Annabelle, are devastated. Benny begins to hear voices of the many things around him while Annabelle clings more and more to the things in her house. Life quickly becomes much, much worse, with Benny unable to function at school and Annabelle in danger of losing her job and her home.
Okay, this is about all I can say about the plot of the story. If you have read Ruth Ozeki before, you know that Ozeki is not a linear writer. The point of view in this book wildly careens from that of a young teenage boy to that of a homeless one-legged poet to that of a lost and lonely mother to that of concrete objects including that of Benny's book itself. The chapters suddenly shift from stories told in the past at the children's section of the library to a present-day riot in the city streets to a mental hospital for young people, with lots of asides for the sharing of Zen philosophy and snow globes and other random thoughts. No doubt it's quirky, and you either delight in this sort of storytelling or you don't. I do, but be prepared that this is 548 pages of the quirkiness of rubber ducks and magnetic poetry and other similar oddities.