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

uuuuuffffff this book was a lot…
you get swept off with the first two parts, the back and forth of the narration (even though why is Ruth so detestable? really hope the author wasn’t depicting herself fr cause girl that character was boring and flat as hell), the mystery is a page turner
and then
it gets so grim… for basically no reason
the topics were heavy but for the first two parts it made sense, after that well suicide, bullying, WWII, a tsunami were enough, rape and prostitution? a bit much if i may
although the introduction to zen theories and practices was so informative, yeah the ending about quantum physics bored me so much I almost didn’t finish the book

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izzyscott's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

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drey_nav's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

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

3.75

Really enjoyed parts I and II of this book and was immediately gripped by Noa's story. I was caught off guard by part III and not in a good way, in a way that makes me question if it was something that was necessary to do.

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blyttgh's review against another edition

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5.0

09/01/24 the provenance of a story, the intimacy of knowing a stranger, post mortem exhumation

I’m reaching forward through time to touch you… you’re reaching back to touch me.

He described it as a collaboration with time and place, whose outcome neither he nor any of his contemporaries works ever live to witness, but he was okay with not knowing.

unbounded nature of not knowing

Appendix B

It was hard to get a sense from the diary of the texture of time passing. No writer, even the most proficient, could re-enact in words the flow of life lived

it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you can find something concrete to keep you busy while you are living your meaningless life.

79-80

If you’ve ever tried to keep a diary, then you’ll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how far you write, you’re always stuck in the then and you can never catch up to what’s happening now, which means that now is pretty much doomed to extinction. It’s hopeless, really. Not that now is ever all that interesting. Now is usually just me, sitting in some dumpy café… moving a pen back and forth a hundred billion times across a page, trying to catch up with myself.

97-98

I felt a sense of calm, knowing that all these creatures had lived and died before me, leaving almost no trace.

265

I got confused. In my mind, she’s still sixteen. She’ll always be sixteen.

The eternal now. She wanted to catch it, remember? To pin it down. That was the point.

Of writing?

Or suicide.

I’ve always thought of writing as the opposite of suicide. That writing was about immortality. Defeating death, or at least forestalling it.

314

The amount of ink I waste on foolish outpourings, smashing clocks in my mind, crying out in my imagination. Forget the clock. It has no power over time, but words do, and now I am tempted to to rip up these pages. Is this how I want to be remembered? By these words? By you?

322-323

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