A boot that kicks a boy hes lost its moral compass.” Exuberance and metta “A vacuum that doesn’t suck hes lost its raison d’etre. “Our vacuum cleaner at home doesn’t want to clean,” he said. After being beaten up one evening, Benny finds the Aleph and the Bottleman at the library. Here, scissors want to stab, bats want to hit, boots are made for walking and vacuum cleaners want to clean. “Of course not! That is what mekks it an excellent question.”Įven as Benny spends time trying to answer his question- what is real?-his voices give agency to the objects around him, making them characters in this story, too. “But I told you, I don’t know what’s real!” “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not!” “But that’s the PROBLEM!” Benny wailed, clapping his hands over his ears. As Benny struggles with the voices he hears, the old poet charges Benny to find a philosophical question to test if he is truly mad: Benny’s safe place is the local library, and they befriend him there, where they all hang out frequently. The Aleph is a teen artist who is also homeless and addicted, and is friends with The Bottleman, an old, wheelchair-bound Slavic homeless poet. The cast of supporting characters here is wonderful. A wonderful cast of supporting characters Is Benny writing the Book or is the Book writing Benny? Sometimes, while reading, I didn’t know what was really happening and what was illusory. But what if objects also impose their meaning on us? It’s a two-way street. We impose meaning on objects, or we think we do. This is a novel about objects and their people, and people and their objects. Yes, you read that correctly: The Book is a major character. Finally, there’s the Book, which just wants to be written and read. Her collected objects speak to her, too, just in a different way. His mother is Annabelle, who holds onto objects desperately and becomes a hoarder.
Is that true? Maybe, or perhaps he’s simply a sensitive soul who can channel the objects around him and give them voice. He is labelled as having schizoaffective disorder. We’re introduced to three major characters: First, there’s Benny Oh, a teen who has lost his father in a tragic accident and begins to hear objects speaking to him. The Book of Form and Emptiness, her most recent novel, has been nominated for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
It’s also for those who love to have their minds messed with in the best possible way. Ruth Ozeki has written a novel for fans of beautiful and engaging storytelling who enjoy likable, flawed characters and would like to have their prose steeped in Buddhist philosophy. This is a modern reading experience that speaks to deeper truths and Buddhist philosophy as a gift. THE BOOK OF FORM AND EMPTINESS: A novel Ruth Ozeki
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