Summary: “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, Nao first 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—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.” (Penguin Random House)
There is so much to enjoy in “A Tale for the Time Being.” Ozeki is a wonderful writer, and her prose is both nuanced and immensely readable. Nao is also an incredibly interesting character to read, both bright and bubbly and deeply troubled. However what I love most about “A Tale” is how Ozeki subtly weaves together concepts from literature, philosophy, quantum mechanics, biology, ecology and religion into a single narrative.
“A Tale for the Time Being” is a book intent on tackling life’s big mysteries – the nature of time, the meaning of life, how to come to terms with death, and what it means to truly know another human being. At the heart of the book’s exploration is (very unusually for a novel) quantum physics. Indeed, quantum theory is so central to the novel that it includes an appendix devoted to quantum mechanics, and which explains superposition, entanglement, and the observer effect. Throughout the novel, Ozeki plays with these principles, applying them to characters and embedding them in the structure of the text. Just as entangled particles communicate across time and space, Ozeki’s characters subtly influence each other’s lives, despite living decades and continents apart. One of my favourite parts of the novel was the way Ozeki plays with the idea of the observer effect, and compares it to the act of reading. Just as observing a particle necessarily changes it, the meaning a text imparts changes depending on the subjectivity of its reader. It’s no easy feat to mix highly abstract theories of physics with literature, but Ozeki does so effortlessly.
Quantum physics is hardly the only science referenced in “A Tale”; I was constantly surprised and delighted by Ozeki’s references to biology, chemistry, and ecology. I also loved the way that Ozeki explores the similarities between science and the more artistic disciplines of philosophy or spirituality. For example, in one scene, Nao attends a Buddhist Obon-Segaki ceremony, at which the nuns chant the names of the dead, an honour that brings the named to life in the memories of those that knew them. Later, when learning about evolutionary history her science class, Nao memorizes the names of extinct species and reverently recites them, moving a juzu (Buddhist prayer) bead on her bracelet with each name. In both instances, Nao describes this reciting of names in revelatory terms; speaking the names aloud seems to reanimate them. When grappling with death, Nao finds that both spirituality and science provide consolation in the form of memory. I love this view of evolutionary biology and palaeontology as an act of honouring past life, remembering the dead through study.
If you’re a nonfiction reader looking to branch out into fiction, or simply a science lover looking for a fun read, give “A Tale for the Time Being” a try!
🔬 Science References: Quantum physics, earth sciences, ecology, evolutionary biology, paleontology.
⚠️Content Warning: This book includes themes of assault and suicide.
Evolutionary, My Dear Watson 