A review by kba76
The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozeki
4.0
I had goose bumps when I read the opening to this book, and saw the focus on stories and how they come into being. Anything featuring books is likely to be of interest, and there’s many elements of this that I enjoyed thoroughly.
The main story focuses on Benny Oh. His father is run over in the alley outside their home when Benny is a teen, and following this their family unit collapses. His mother, Annabelle, is empathetic and desperately wants to support her son, but she is clearly struggling with grief and lapses into hoarding. Perhaps as a consequence of his grief, or perhaps it was always a possibility, Benny starts to hear voices coming from the objects around him. When the scissors he is holding one day in school tell him to stab the teacher, he ignores them but ends up hurting himself.
Following this incident, life treats both characters harshly. They need support, but things have to get to crisis point before anyone seems to notice them. This is a damning indictment on modern society and how we deal with loss, grief, mental health and attitudes to consumerism/anyone a little different. The involvement of Annabelle's book, which crops up at opportune moments, introduces us to the alternative ways of considering her behaviour - seeing her hoarding as signs of a restless spirit caused by the brutality of her partner's death.
While I found myself liking individual characters and elements of the book, my overwhelming feeling by the close of play was of exhaustion. There were so many things introduced and referred to that weren't always developed or seeming to link to the main story that I wondered if all of them were strictly necessary. The business of the book itself may well reflect the chaos of Annabelle's existence, and this is certainly a book I would recommend to others.
The main story focuses on Benny Oh. His father is run over in the alley outside their home when Benny is a teen, and following this their family unit collapses. His mother, Annabelle, is empathetic and desperately wants to support her son, but she is clearly struggling with grief and lapses into hoarding. Perhaps as a consequence of his grief, or perhaps it was always a possibility, Benny starts to hear voices coming from the objects around him. When the scissors he is holding one day in school tell him to stab the teacher, he ignores them but ends up hurting himself.
Following this incident, life treats both characters harshly. They need support, but things have to get to crisis point before anyone seems to notice them. This is a damning indictment on modern society and how we deal with loss, grief, mental health and attitudes to consumerism/anyone a little different. The involvement of Annabelle's book, which crops up at opportune moments, introduces us to the alternative ways of considering her behaviour - seeing her hoarding as signs of a restless spirit caused by the brutality of her partner's death.
While I found myself liking individual characters and elements of the book, my overwhelming feeling by the close of play was of exhaustion. There were so many things introduced and referred to that weren't always developed or seeming to link to the main story that I wondered if all of them were strictly necessary. The business of the book itself may well reflect the chaos of Annabelle's existence, and this is certainly a book I would recommend to others.