Lead Review

  • Book: A Tale for the Time Being
  • Location: Canada, Tokyo
  • Author: Ruth Ozeki

Location

Content

The Japanese sections alternate with chapters set in Ruth’s “fog-enshrouded outpost”; the lively narrator in Tokyo is the more entertaining of the two, though Ozeki tries to cram in just a little bit too much. In addition to bullying, suicide and kamikaze pilots, we get love hotels, the Fukushima disaster, vengeful ghosts and even an auction of girls’ panties.

The sections in Canada, by contrast, can seem a little dull. That is partly because Ozeki successfully conjures up the melancholic atmosphere of a community that has cut itself off.
– David Pilling –

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