The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This year’s 5-star book. I don’t think I’ll find another this good, or that another this good will find me before 2027.
What a marvellous, wide-ranging, fun and imaginative book! Benny, an adolescent whose father died in a ludicrous yet tragic manner, hears voices; his mother takes refuge in possessions. Growing up and dealing with grief are never easy, and that spectre of mental illness makes it worse, yet there is hope and humour.
And there is a book.
It took me three weeks to read this book – comparable length books would take me a week – and I savoured every page. It is full of ideas, the characters and clever, and fully baked, with interesting complexities. There’s a sprinkling of Zen Buddhism, but also (my word, not the author’s) of Shinto, Japan’s animist religion, in which everything has a spirit. And Jazz. Something very special happened in 1938 in the Carnegie Hall, and I’d never have known if I hadn’t read this book.
Buy it, read it, learn!