The Book Of Form And Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

 

This book is told from the viewpoints of two narrators.  Benny is a young teenage boy.  His is in deep grief as his world was torn apart two years ago when his father died.  Kanji was a jazz musician and spent hours each day with Benny who idolized him.  When Kanji is killed in the alley outside their home, run over as he lay in a drugged stupor, everything changes.  Benny becomes estranged from the world, unconnected from a place that brings nothing but pain and fear.

The other narrator is the book that tells the story of Benny's life.  Along with Benny's story, it tells the story of books themselves, what they think, their hopes and fears and dreams.  Benny now lives with his mother Annabelle.  She has a marginal job tracking news stories for various clients.  Her employer requires her to achieve the sources so their house is crammed full of bags and boxes of old newspapers and magazines.  Add that to Annabelle's penchant for saving everything and a hoarding situation has developed.

Benny's life continues to deteriorate.  He is an outcast at school.  Soon he starts to hear voices, not voices of people but those of  objects.  He hides this new development as best as he can but it is clear he is struggling and he ends up in a pediatric psychiatric ward.  There he meets a teenage girl who he is fascinated with but who has many issues of her own.  Can all these damaged people find a way to exist without pain?

Ruth Ozeki writes literary novels that explore the corners of normality.  She has studied Buddhism for many years and that belief system infuses these pages.  The reader will be drawn into Benny's world and yearn for a world in which he and Annabelle learn to thrive rather than barely survive.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.