The Book of Form and Emptiness: A Novel

Product Description
“No one writes like Ruth Ozeki—a triumph.” —Matt Haig, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library “Inventive, vivid, and propelled by a sense of wonder.” —TIME “If you’ve lost your way with fiction over the last year or two, let The Book of Form and Emptiness light your way home.” —David Mitchell, Booker Prize-finalist author of Cloud Atlas A boy who hears the voices of objects all around him; a mother drowning in her possessions; and a Book that might hold the secret to saving them both—the brilliantly inventive new novel from the Booker Prize-finalist Ruth Ozeki\nOne year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.\nAt first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.\nAnd he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.\nWith its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions,
The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki—bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.
Amazon.com Review
If someone were to recommend a novel featuring a character who hears wilted lettuce talking, that might give me pause. But when it’s penned by Ruth Ozeki, sign me up!
The Book of Form and Emptiness finds a mother and son grappling with the profound loss of the patriarch of the family, who dies in a freak accident. While the mother’s anguish expresses itself in a growing hoarding problem, her son hears inanimate objects talking to him, and these voices eventually overwhelm in a cacophony that drowns out his own. Did I mention the book itself is also a character? This is just another of the many quirky elements that leaven an otherwise serious but achingly compassionate story that mines the complexities of grief while also making a sly critique of consumerism. And Ozeki does this with her signature humanity and heart. If you listen carefully, you might hear this book telling you to read it, and you absolutely should.
—Erin Kodicek, Amazon Editor
Review
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF FALL 2021 BY TIME, VULTURE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, LIT HUB, THE MILLIONS, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND BOOKPAGE\n“[A] Borgesian, Zen Buddhist parable of consumerism . . . [Ozeki] endows objects and animals with anima, the breath of life . . . [she] ensouls the world . . . There’s powerful magic here . . . Ozeki is unusually patient with her characters, even the rebarbative ones, and she is able to record the subtle peculiarities of other classes of beings that more overeager writers would probably miss . . . Ozeki gives us a metaphor for our very own American consumption disorder, our love-hate relationship with the stuff we produce and can’t let go of.”
—New York Times Book Review\n“A masterful meditation on consumer culture . . . This novel’s meditative pacing perfectly suits its open-hearted contemplation. The book’s self-awareness allows it to comically hedge and tiptoe, to