2021 book 182

 Ruth Ozeki's The Book of Form and Emptiness

So I will read anything by Ruth Ozeki, and my hopes were especially high for this one based on the pre-pub buzz and of course on her previous novel, A Tale for the Time Being. And parts of this definitely lived up to said hopes, and some other parts kind of stressed me out. This is the story of young teen Benny (and to a lesser extent, his mother), as told by a Book with occasional interjections from Benny himself. Benny's musician father has died in a fairly ridiculous accident, and now Benny is hearing voices of objects around him. Meanwhile his mother, grief-stricken and traumatized by childhood sexual abuse, has become a hoarder. I loved the meta parts of this; everything with Benny and his book was great. I also loved all the denizens of the Library (of course). The novel deals unflinchingly with drug abuse, trauma, grief, and mental illness, and that makes it a little hard to read at times. This book is great, but the ending didn’t a hundred percent work for me. Ozeki creates such interesting worlds, though. Definitely worth a read. A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on September 21st.