On present-day Vancouver Island, “Ruth,” a Japanese-American novelist who is attempting to write a memoir of her mother’s slow demise from Alzheimer’s but has a bad case of writer’s block, stumbles across a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the beach. The time being: in the Buddhist viewpoint, each human is entrapped by time, which means that we are all in this together this is an Everyman tale. The time being: the present moment is what we’re stuck with now and must embrace. A Tale for the Time Being is a rich reflection on what it means to be human in an era of short attention spans, the dearth of meaning, and imminent environmental threat.

If I’d had my way, the 2013 Man Booker Prize would have gone to this novel-writing documentary filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priestess from British Columbia, Canada (by way of Japan). On a good note the author reads the audiobook and does a pretty good job. Should have followed instinct to chuck the book. The only hope was that the brilliance of the Nao sections would override the banality of the Ruth sections. Then the end starts drawing closer and I swear I have never been so close to chucking a book in disgust after investing so much time. Almost abandoned the book but Nao's story was compelling enough to hang on. I listened to this and every time Nao's part was over and Ruth's story came up, I groaned. The worst parts were Ruth's dreams!!! Oh lord how annoying, how iffy and again how bloody irritatingly annoying.Ĭut out all the Ruth sections and this would have been a much better book.

Found Ruth self pitying and bloody boring. Then the Ruth sections would pop up and it was like going from brilliance to silly trivialities in milliseconds.

The reason it was going to get a great review was the fact that the Nao's sections were well written, dispensing a lot of cultural information without sounding like a lecture. How bad is it? At first I thought it was a joke within the book. It's not the spiritual realm that's the problem, it's the fact that it comes from almost nowhere and it sounds forced and ridiculous, very unlike Nao's meeting of her ancestors. It's ridiculous! Some psychic, whimsical, Then Ruth's dream sequence comes up and ugh it damn near ruins the bloody book. Till about the second half of part 3, I was all set to give this rave reviews 'cause Nao's story was so compelling and well written plus there wasn't enough of Ruth's woeful tone to grate on the nerves.

Dammit this should have been at least a 4 star book!

A tale for the time being a novel