Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

11 reviews

ghilimei's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0


Expand filter menu 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. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

audreytallulah's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

penofpossibilities's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

wizardingwisteria's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective 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

4.0

This one was certainly a ride.  Picked this one up on a whim at a small local bookstore and it was a great find.  The idea of connecting with someone through an old lost diary is really interesting and the way it was pulled off here was great. Nao felt like a real person and I felt like I was reading her real diaries

Overall I would recommend this to anyone willing to do a thorough search of the content warnings because it is a heavier read with a lot of depressing moments 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

lilacwhisker's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Loved this book so much!! It being told from the perspective of the reader and writer of the diary was so fun and interesting to read. I also really liked the appendices and cliff notes added. Nao was an amazing character and I loved reading about her while also learning about Buddhism. I thought the way that Ruth and Nao’s characters contrasted made for an exciting story and I also liked how they shared similarities in their lives and it felt like their two separate stories blended more and more the further I got into the book. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

anna220310's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

4.25


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

thmei's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

i adored this book. it just worked for me in every possible way. i related so much to nao’s perspective , even when the events of our lives deviated, and the way ruth ozeki captured the inner dialogue of a 16 year old felt so authentic and intelligently done. i may have loved ruth’s parts even more. i know a lot of people didn’t really like her story, but i adored it. i totally understood the experience of feeling consumed by someone else’s story and i loved how much of ruth you still saw in her story despite how much nao’s diary came to affect her. i adored ruth and all the other people in her life and i thought inserting herself and her husband as characters gave this novel a really interesting relationship to truth that played with nao’s story in such a cool way. and the ending. i know people hated this too. i tend to read negative reviews before i pick something up just to see if i think its flaws might bother me and to make sure a book isnt gonna spring a super triggering or bigoted scene or anything like that on me, and when i read about the sharp left turn into magical realism, i thought for sure i’d hate the ending too. instead i adored it. it felt very well foreshadowed to me, so while there’s one scene that very clearly marks the tip off the edge of our world, it didn’t feel shocking to me when that happened. several things in this book go very pointedly unexplained and several things happen that are obviously supernatural, and while you can explain them away as being imagined or made up, i don’t think the text makes them feel that way at all. a magical ending felt like the right place to go. plus, it felt like the only way to satisfy the story. what happened at the end felt like what needed to happen. it served the rest of the story well.

this book explored a lot of themes in a very tangible, human way and that’s what i loved about it. i think i could talk about it for ages. it obviously won’t work for everyone, but i personally am very glad i picked it up. if you’re a writer, a big reader, someone who feels a little lost or a little lonely, someone who had a rough childhood or shitty parents, or someone who likes to think about life or death or truth or memory or love or anything else in the synopsis, give it a shot.

i’m going to keep the content warning explanations as spoiler free as possible but i do still want to explain the big things, because i think there are some things you can skip around if you have to, and for some you should avoid this book entirely if you think they might trigger you. i’ve marked pretty much everything as spoilers so if you’re just looking for one specific explanation, you can choose that. i know i always want explanations so hopefully someone finds them helpful.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

princessfabulous's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark 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

3.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

bugcollector's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings