Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being was published in March of 2013, nearly two years after Japan's catastrophic Tohoku tsunami. In this work of metafiction, Ruth Ozeki, an American novelist facing writer’s block, finds a diary on a Canadian beach washed ashore from Japan. Without meaning to, Ruth becomes immersed in sixteen-year-old Nao Yasutani’s life story—at least for the time being. Ruth cannot be sure whether Nao has carried out her suicide plan or has been lost to the tsunami of some years ago; her only hope lies in the “now” that hangs precariously between the lines of Nao’s gel-penned script. With great poignancy and surprising humor, Ozeki weaves a tale intertwining two women’s lives that posits the ultimate question of all readers: What happens when we reach the end?

        The “fictitious” Ruth of the novel sets out to read Nao’s entries at the same pace they were written; thus, Ozeki’s work is slow-moving. Author Ozeki dedicates several chapters to power outages in her forested Canadian-hippie neighborhood, harping on the mysterious disappearance of her quantum-mechanics-defying cat, Pesto, rather than staying focused on the narrative of Nao’s diary. However, this “speed of life” movement is a manifestation of the novel’s title, emphasizing the concept of time as an ephemeral yet concentrated essence of the present. As Nao’s 104-year-old Zen Buddhist nun grandmother says in her characteristically paradoxical way: “To grasp this truly, every being that exists in the entire world is linked together as moments in time, and at the same time exist as individual moments in time.”

        Indeed, how does Nao connect to the now, making her teenage yet completely non-trivial journal “a tale for the time being?” Escapism is a reasonable enough answer, and this little book sweeps its readers across the Pacific in a lunchbox along with Ruth. The novel’s most stunning prose comes from Nao’s aforementioned grandmother, Jiko, with whom Nao spends the summer at her remote temple in the mountains. Simple things like taking a bath, reading a letter, or—in the case of Nao’s teen angst catharsis—fighting the ocean hold universal lessons of an acute awareness of self (and non-self, Jiko might add) that passes on from Nao to Ruth to the reader, encouraging each of us to reconsider our own existences. As the contemporary interpreter of the diary, Ruth’s narrative perspective keeps Japan’s 2011 tsunami always on the horizon of readerly consciousness. Ruth herself struggles with not knowing what has become of Nao Yasutani since the infamous disaster, however, she ultimately grows to appreciate the now and Nao’s true presence on the page, even if just for this moment. In the midst of a surging pandemic, many of us have been ready to submit to the waves of despair and willingly let our fates wash over us, but Ozeki’s story simply won’t allow it. Similar to Ozeki’s characters, who remain resilient in the face of bullying, depression, and perhaps even the greatest natural catastrophe in Japanese history, we must value the present and fight to keep the forecasted currents at bay, no matter how high the water rises. The future is uncertain, but we can fight to live in the now; in the words of Jiko, it is our supapawa!

        A Tale for the Time Being contemplates immaterially stunning concepts: life, nature, fate, and acceptance. And what about Nao? “As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid cafe in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad Chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present, writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you're reading this, then maybe by now you're wondering about me, too.”