After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-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 develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.At 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, where 'things happen'. He falls in love with a mesmerising 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.And 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.With 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.
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The Book of Form and Emptiness
von Ruth Ozeki
After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-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 develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.At 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, where 'things happen'. He falls in love with a mesmerising 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.And 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.With 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.
Aktuelle Rezensionen(2)
Rezension von LeseratteThe language in this book is so beautiful that it makes me want to read all the other novels by this author. During my read I had a personal tragedy happen to me which made the story much more relatable and I can say it helped me get through a few very dark days. I loved the characters, especially the Aleph and the Bottleman. Something that annoyed me though was (spoiler:) animal deaths left and right (and the male protagonist not caring about them). The deaths served a storytelling purpose that I don't want to spoil but it felt unnecessarily cruel to me.
Rezension von JuliaEin emphatisches, selbst-bewusstes Buch berichtet als Erzähler über schwierige, komplexe Leben von faszinierenden Romanfiguren? Ja, doch immer her damit! Diese interessante Struktur hat mich durch so manche Längen des Textes hindurchgetragen. Fand ich den Protagonisten, Teenager Benny Oh, am Anfang noch außerordentlich clever geschildert, ging er mit seiner ungezielten Wut dann doch ganz schön auf die Nerven - andererseits: sehr authentisch, denn Teenager sind nervig und verschlossen und einsam, obwohl sie von Menschen umgeben sind, die ihnen Gutes wollen. Auch die anderen Figuren hatten ihre Momente, in denen ich sie gern verlassen hätte, indem ich das Buch weggelegt hätte. Aber: die letzen 100 Seiten bringen alles schön ideenreich zusammen und die Message des Buchs stimmt dann doch Ein Schmöker mit Längen, herausfordernde Figuren, spannendes Setting - schon ein gutes Buch, in seinen besten Momenten irgendwo zwischen Siri Hustvedt, John Irving und einer ganz neuen Erzählstimme mit neuen Ideen, die ich so nicht kannte. PS: the Aleph ist eine verdammte Superheldin! „The Little Book lay on Top of her, enjoying the pillowy softness of her stomach and the gentle rise and fall of her breath as it guarded her through the night. It would be a while before Annabelle got back to reading ‘tidy magic’, but books are patient. We know how urgent and compelling your lives are, and so we hide our time.” “It seemed more likely that she [the Aleph] was an extraterrestrial being who hatched from a beautiful alien egg, and he didn’t mean that in a bad way.” “Because the reader is not a passive receptacle for a books contents. Not at all. You are our collaborators, our conspirators, breathing new life into us.” “‘Shake it,’ she whispered, and when he did, a cloud of books floated through the thickened air. There were some words and few loose letters, too, and even sie punctuation. They swirled and slowly settled around him.”