The book of form and emptiness review5/18/2023 ![]() ![]() This book ponders the very nature of things. The author of the lauded novel "A Tale for the Time Being," Ozeki teaches at Smith College in Massachusetts. Which makes a kind of sense - they were manufactured in China. ![]() The scissors, for instance, speak to him in Mandarin. But something else is afoot, for Benny appears to be having real interactions with nonliving objects. This last incident lands him in a psychiatric hospital, where he's prescribed drugs for his hallucinations. Library books wail for his attention as they're fed into a high-tech sorting system: "We are not units!" His mom's teapot disagrees that it's "short and stout." A pair of scissors taunts Benny until he jams the points into his thigh. Since his father, Kenji, was killed in a truck accident, he's been getting an earful from inanimate objects. Why? The window was sobbing and "I needed it to stop," he explains.īenny is an angry boy, but that's only part of the story. Early in "The Book of Form and Emptiness," Ruth Ozeki's heady new novel, an off-course bird bangs into a classroom window: "THWACK!" The middle schoolers are stunned. ![]()
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