Reviews with content warning for Violence - A Tale for the Time Being

I know that I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. The themes explored here are ones that I’m personally invested in, and it feels like the quintessential story about time. I do feel there could have been very slight improvements to Ruth’s sections and to the end to enhance my investment in her character, but they would be minor changes. Overall, I think this book is really something special.

Content Warnings

jessiedoodah's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

szuum's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

mariebrunelm's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This heartfelt but sometimes difficult novel creates a bridge between two characters through a notebook. On one side, Nao is a teenager living in Tokyo and journaling about her depressed father, larger-than-life great-grandmother, and uprooting after several years living in California. On the other side, Ruth is a Canadian-Japanese writer living on the West coast of Canada, on a small and very remote island with her husband, trying to write her next novel and finding Nao’s journal.

I really enjoyed the multi-facetted portrait of Japanese culture this novel delivers. Through Nao and Ruth’s experiences, and what we come to learn about Nao’s family, we get a kaleidoscope of Japan in the 20th century that never feels like a history lesson. Special points go to Jiko, the anarchist and feminist nun that Nao visits in her temple. There were some very hard moments to read about (see the content warnings) and I had to skip a few paragraphs, but it is also a novel bursting with poetry and exploration of identity.

Content Warnings

_ge_gardner's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was so striking. It was intimate, devastating, and hopeful, I was often crying while reading this and I wondered why do we read things that move us so much, I thought maybe it was a mistake to keep reading, especially I thought it might be a mistake to keep reading while feeling low and maybe I should have at times. Nonetheless, I kept reading.

I am so intrigued by the Zen Buddhist insight aswell as the quantum physics, both of which weave through. Questions of morality, and doing good, being anarchist when unseen were familiar and emotional.

i found the bathroom scene as well as some of the ‘dates’/underage sexwork too much for me. I am putting this down to my own unwillingness to expose myself to that rather than a flaw of the book

take content warnings (sexual violence, hazing, suicidality of this book seriously as the narrator is graphic.

It is often about suicide, but it is also about the tenderness of loving family members, conscience and responsibility, the vulnerability of acceptance, and the ultimate unknowability of the flip-side of the coin.

Content Warnings

kaatelin's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.5

i liked how the book explored some aspects of time and the impact on the reader on the story, but i felt like it dove too deep too few times so it didn’t feel like a really consistent motif

My favourite section of this book easily was Nao’s time with her great grandmother, it was atmospheric, and considering Nao and her great grandma are the only character who felt really flushed out to me, it felt like such a well developed part of the story. I also just love all her prayers and the relationship built between the two of them. It was the one clear and believable moment of hope in the novel

Ruth is really there to represent us as the reader, but I also felt a bit mislead by this idea of Ruth as a sort of detective trying to figure out Nao’s story. I think there was little more I got out of the story by having her as this sort of facilitator of discovery. In some ways I wish I was first hand experiencing it, with Nao talking to me, or even it could be an interesting opportunity to use a second person voice to pull the reader in even more beyond Nao’s direct calls to the reader/Ruth.
—> after checking out the print version it does some interesting things with footnotes! Most are just translations but a few are Ruth questioning Nao’s narrative, which does a good job as positioning Ruth as an investigative force in the story! The appendixes did nothing for me though

I am glad Ruth’s husband called her out for her bullshit about being worried about Nao as an “urgent issue” but also reading the journal so slowly!! And naming that the timing was so unclear, how did she not thing earlier that the journal was many years old!!

I also just did not care for Ruth’s side of the story!! See narrative development reasons above, but also everyone in that story was either boring or part of this rotating cast on the island who each got one moment of importance

Certain points of this book just got too much for me, Nao’s bathroom attack in particular as well as her “dates”. They really soured the story for me and the redemption only happened when she went to be by her great grandmother.

take all the content warnings at face value, because Nao does not sugar coat or glance over anything. She’s got a clear narrative voice and it’s a blunt one.

I don’t love how we had to spell out some things, like having Ruth and her husband state clearly Haruki One and Haruki Two’s motivations for their actions and directly drawing a parallel. I kind of want the author to trust the reader a bit more. It also felt like everything had to be justified - I’m not sure it added more to the story to me to learn that Nao’s dad had this other motive behind his firing and his suicidality

I seem to have a lot of thoughts on this book!! I’ll edit and add more if I think of anything else, but overall despite the more mediocre rating, it did really catch my attention and I got through it fairly quickly!!

Content Warnings

galoshes's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'd picked up this book at the library, opened to the first page, and put it back on the shelf and looked for something else. Nothing else seemed particularly interesting, so I picked this up again and checked it out. I had no idea what it was about.

Sometimes I loved it. Sometimes I hated it. Sometimes I wondered why certain paragraphs were included at all. Now having finished it, I think I get what it was supposed to mean.

It's a huge stretch to say this character would spend so much time and energy researching when she hasn't even finished reading yet. It's like stopping halfway through a movie to run out and search the library for what happens next. The entire book, the character of Ruth (she wrote herself in as a character? By the end I wonder if this was another layer) makes no sense. And then she does. I think.

There are some horrifying scenes and subjects in this book I wasn't prepared for. I got emotional at times. Sometimes I talked out loud to the book, responding to it. Sometimes I just wondered what the point was. And then we got to the point and I don't know what to feel about it. Anyway I'd read it again. I might have to.

Content Warnings

nkmustdie's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

More...