Book of Form and Emptiness

lokroma reviewed The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Review of 'The Book of Form and Emptiness' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

DNF...Ozeki is a pretty good writer. Her writing is light and playful and there are lots of nice passages in the book. Her characters are quirky but appealing and generally well developed. I think she's talking about how things, especially the things we create and write, retain our nature but also become entities unto themselves. Yet somehow this doesn't come together for me as a novel. Lots of digressions and extraneous stuff feel like fillers. (I did not need to read about the architectural history of the Vancouver Public Library, e.g.). And I really didn't like the talking (read hectoring, lecturing, essay writing) books that seemed to appear whenever the author needed to provide some information to the reader, succumbing to the old "telling rather than showing" pitfall.

This could have been a sweet story about a boy grieving for his dad who starts hearing voices while he deals with …

DNF...Ozeki is a pretty good writer. Her writing is light and playful and there are lots of nice passages in the book. Her characters are quirky but appealing and generally well developed. I think she's talking about how things, especially the things we create and write, retain our nature but also become entities unto themselves. Yet somehow this doesn't come together for me as a novel. Lots of digressions and extraneous stuff feel like fillers. (I did not need to read about the architectural history of the Vancouver Public Library, e.g.). And I really didn't like the talking (read hectoring, lecturing, essay writing) books that seemed to appear whenever the author needed to provide some information to the reader, succumbing to the old "telling rather than showing" pitfall.

This could have been a sweet story about a boy grieving for his dad who starts hearing voices while he deals with a problematic mom. It feels like Ozeki thinks she needs to create something structurally experimental or post-modern, and it isn't her forte and it doesn't work. If she had eliminated the superficial and the trying to be cool elements the book would have been half as long and twice as good.

Court reviewed The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Unsatisfying

3 stars

Content warning Spoilers for the ending

Too long, a good number of pages could be cut to its benefit. It takes a while for things to get going. The sections on the Marie Kondo equivalent didn't add anything.
While the descriptions of mental illness feel believable and interesting, at the end things are wrapped up in an unsatisfying and inauthentic way. Annabelle did not really have an "aha" moment, I don't think she even got real therapy, and Benny didn't have a breakthrough with medication or treatment. I don't feel that either are truly on a path towards healing.
Some distasteful language around Benny's new friends, many of who are experiencing homelessness. These secondary characters felt like cliches as well.

I enjoyed the premise and I felt like Benny's and Annabelle's struggles were well documented, though could have been a little tighter. Ultimately I'm not sure what this book was trying to tell me.

Julie R reviewed The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

The ending made me mad (a danger of long books)

4 stars

The excruciatingly detailed build-up of these characters and their descents into mental illness felt careful and correct. But the turn toward healing did not work for me, as it was a deus ex machina. It was also, imo, an unhealthy and toxic framing for the teen. I loathed the "book" sections. They felt condescending and irritated tf out of me. I wanted this book to be about 200 pages less. It was hard to read that much pain and trauma for so long without any respite. My favorite part was the window (I cried) and the Coping Cards (but I was mad she sort of stopped talking about them as a healing mechanism later on when he needed them most).

(My reading notes full of spoilers and quotes are here: persephoneknits.dreamwidth.org/10493.html)

loppear reviewed The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

chattering

3 stars

A long many-voiced dialog on trauma and mental illness - perhaps society's role in mental illness, perhaps the basic human condition. Too much to go on, it fizzled for me.

Eduardo Santiago reviewed The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Review of 'The Book of Form and Emptiness' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

(I’m in the minority here. My notes here are purely for my own purposes, for future recollection. They are not intended to sway you toward or against reading it, and you should, because everyone says it’s great).

It did not work for me. I tried, and kept trying, off and on over three months. Finally finished it in a solid push: yet another book this year that I wish I had DNF’ed. I just found it cringeworthy. The little boy evoked more pity than compassion. I sort of rooted for him, but he wasn’t interesting enough to actually care much about. His mother, though, not even that. I found her banal, a soulless waste of space, and am admitting that because I realize how poorly that reflects on me. I was fully aware of this failing of mine, actively curious about it, trying to find a way to develop compassion …

(I’m in the minority here. My notes here are purely for my own purposes, for future recollection. They are not intended to sway you toward or against reading it, and you should, because everyone says it’s great).

It did not work for me. I tried, and kept trying, off and on over three months. Finally finished it in a solid push: yet another book this year that I wish I had DNF’ed. I just found it cringeworthy. The little boy evoked more pity than compassion. I sort of rooted for him, but he wasn’t interesting enough to actually care much about. His mother, though, not even that. I found her banal, a soulless waste of space, and am admitting that because I realize how poorly that reflects on me. I was fully aware of this failing of mine, actively curious about it, trying to find a way to develop compassion for her. No luck. That may be the book’s lesson for me: I have much work to do to become a kinder person.

There were interesting characters but it was never clear to me why they chose to invest their time in the kid and his mother — nor how. Serendipitous encounters galore, so many that I just learned-helplessnessly accepted them by midway: okay, right, small world, again. If there was mention of an Infinite Improbability Drive, I missed it.

Sweet in many ways, well intentioned, but obviously intended for an audience that is not me.