The Book of Form and Emptiness (2022)
Who wrote it?
Ruth Diana Lounsbury, better known by her nom de plume Ruth Ozeki (1956- ; active 1998- ), born New Haven, Connecticut, USA. She is the daughter of two linguists, the American Floyd Lounsbury and the Japanese Masako Yokoyama. She graduated from Smith College, Massachusetts, with a BA in English and Asian Studies in 1980, and subsequently taught at Nara University in Japan.
In 1985 she moved to New York City and began working in film, initially on art direction and production design for low budget horror movies. She moved into producing and directing TV and film, and her second film, an autobiographical documentary Halving the Bones (1995) was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.
She published her first novel, My Year of Meats, in 1998, with a story based on her time working on Japanese TV. It won several awards, as did her second book All Over Creation (2003). It was her 2013 novel A Tale for the Time Being that really saw her come to wider attention, with nominations for the 2013 Booker Prize (losing out to Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries) and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, among others. She won the 2014 Dos Passos Prize.
She was ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in 2010, and edits the website Everyday Zen.
What's it about?
The Book of Form of Emptiness centres on Benny Oh, a young Canadian adolescent who has recently lost his father, the Korean-Japanese jazz musician Kenji, and now lives with his mother Annabelle. It is told by turns from the persepectives of a book (“the book”) and Benny himself, who debates with the seemingly autonomous book as it develops.
Following the loss of his father (who was killed by a truck carrying live chickens as he lay passed out following a night smoking marijuana with his jazz band) Benny begins to hear voices in everyday objects. While initially harmless enough, following an incident with a pair of scissors who want him to stab his teacher, Benny is sent to a youth mental health facility. Meanwhile, Annabelle is struggling with the decline of her profession as a media monitoring researcher, and demonstrating (to Benny’s dismay) increasing tendencies towards hoarding.
While in the facility, Benny meets an older girl who refers to herself as The Aleph, with whom he quickly becomes infatuated. Following his release, he skips school to hang out in a Library, where he eventually reconnects with the homeless Aleph and a group of her friends, most notably the wheelchair-bound Slovenian poet, philosopher and drunk Slavoj. He is introduced to a wide range of ideas by this motley group of outcasts, mostly centring on the thinking of Walter Benjamin. Following some harmless-enough adventures, he is eventually cajoled by some less well-intentioned new ‘friends’ into participating in the riots following the election of (the unnamed here) President Trump, and is returned to a mental health facility where he becomes temporarily immobile and mute.
His mother is dealing with an avalanche of issues, as she loses her job, is threatened with eviction by her landlord’s ‘No-Good’ son, and eventually told that if she doesn’t clean up her house she will lose custody of Benny. Her brief fascination with a book called Tidy Magic, written by a female Japanese zen monk with whom she initiates an initially one-sided correspondence, fails to help her. A good-hearted librarian, Cody, marshalls the homeless people who hang out at the library to help her out, but she is triggered by the process and initially fails. At this point, she is on the verge of losing Benny when he has realisations (aided by the Aleph) that might change things for the better.
What I liked
Despite its sometimes heavy subject matter (it tackles, amongst other things: grief, various serious mental health issues, addiction, late capitalist consumerism, the climate crisis, homelessness…. the list goes on!) this was somehow an incredibly joyful read, and a welcome antidote to some more relentlessly grim recent reads (such as the majority of last year’s Booker shortlist!)
It’s structural conceits, notably the narration by ‘the book’ are a delight. They enable her to have some fun with celebrating the purpose of the book as an object, as well as exploring their limitations in enacting real-world change.
It’s a book with a memorable cast of characters, all larger than life and who really jump off the page. It would make for a really interesting movie adaptation.
It’s a book that has at its heart the central question, ‘What is Real?’, and it deploys a whole range of references to philosophical explorations of the same and related questions. Its frequent direct references to Walter Benjamin and Borges are the most obvious, but there’s more fun to be had with references to Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone (here acting as the name of the Aleph’s pet ferret!) and a throwaway reference to ‘the Desert of the Real’ which is either pointing at Slavoj Zizek (himself an obvious part-inspiration for the book’s Slavoj) or Baudrillard.
It’s a supremely moving book, particularly in its focus on Annabelle. Her obvious devotion to Benny and persistent attempts to please him, which seem doomed to failure, is heartbreakingly sad. She’s accumulating things in part at least to do things which she thinks would endear herself to her son, who remains far more connected to his late father. A section involving stuffed toys late in the novel is particularly tearjerking.
I loved Ozeki’s good humour around the subject of Zen itself, clearly a subject that means a lot to her personally, but one which she is able to both celebrate and lightly mock throughout the book. I’ve seen the odd review describing this book as ‘preachy’ and - on this subject at least - I found it to be anything but.
It reminded me of so many books and authors I’ve loved over my reading life, everything from Pynchon through to David Mitchell (quoted on the cover) - yet still had its own unique and brilliant voice.
What I didn’t like
It ended :(
Food & drink pairings
Illicit booze from the Bottleman
Weed
Fun facts
The novel was something of an outsider winner, with Meg Mason and Elif Shafak apparently deemed more likely winners in the build-up.
The library in the book is based on Vancouver Public Library, where she worked on her first novel
This is the second Women’s Prize winner in a row to reference Jorge Luis Borges (more overtly this time)
Vanquished Foes
Lisa Allen-Agostini (The Bread the Devil Knead)
Louise Erdrich (The Sentence)
Meg Mason (Sorrow and Bliss)
Elif Shafak (The Island of Missing Trees)
Maggie Shipstead (Great Circle)
2022’s Booker Prize went to Shehan Karunatilakea’s The Seven Moons of Maalii Almeida. While there was no direct overlap in 2022, Great Circle had featured on 2021’s Booker shortlist.
Context
In 2022:
Widespread ending or significant loosening of Covid-19 restrictions around the world
Russian invasion of Ukraine begins in February
Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Platinum Jubilee in the UK, despite ill health
Elizabeth dies in September, and is succeeded by her son, Charles III
Boris Johnson resigns as UK Prime Minister, replaced by Liz Truss who manages only 45 days in office before being replaced herself by Rishi Sunak following a catastrophic 'mini-budget'
Global food prices hit highest level since records began in 1990
Pakistan elects Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister after Imran Khan removed from office following a motion of no confidence
Monkeypox (later renamed mpox) outbreak
Labor party under Anthony Albanese wins Australian federal election
Droupadi Murma elected as President of India
Major wildfires and record high temperatures spread across Europe in July and August
Serious flooding in Pakistan in August
Giorgia Meloni becomes first female Prime Minister of Italy, as the head of a rightwing coalition
Xi Jinping begins a third term as China's paramount leader
Lula da Silva defeats incumbent Jair Bolsonaro to return as Brazil's president
Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power in Israel as head of a bloc of rightwing parties
World population reaches 8 billion
OpenAI releases ChatGPT to the general public
Elon Musk acquires Twitter, later rebranded as X
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX files for bankruptcy
FIFA World Cup held in November and December in Qatar amid some controversy, eventually won by Argentina
England win UEFA Women's Euro 2022 at home
Death of Brazilian football legend Pele
Eurovision Song Contest won by Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra
Salman Rushdie stabbed multiple times at a public lecture in New York
Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise
Gabrielle Zevin, Tommorow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water
Joshua Cohen, The Netenyahus
Kendrick Lamar, Mr Morale & the Big Steppers
Beyonce, Renaissance
The Weekend, Dawn FM
Taylor Swift, Midnights
SZA, SOS
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Top Gun: Maverick
Everything Everywhere All At Once
The Banshees of Inisherin
Life Lessons
Books are great
…but they don’t always have all the answers
Score
9.5
In recent years, the Women’s Prize seems to have delivered a really consistent stream of brilliant winners. This is one of the absolute best, and a book that will absolutely lead me to checking out more of Ozeki’s writing. I’m really looking forward to that, and to diving into this year’s Women’s Prize shortlist (and maybe longlist) when it arrives.
I gave 2022 Booker winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida 7.5/10.
Final ranking:
Piranesi (2021) - Susanna Clarke - 10
The Book of Form and Emptiness (2022) - Ruth Ozeki - 9.5
How to be both (2015) - Ali Smith - 9.5
Demon Copperhead (2023) - Barbara Kingsolver - 9.5
Property (2003) - Valerie Martin - 9.5
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (2014) - Eimear McBride - 9.5
Hamnet (2020) - Maggie O’Farrell - 9.5
The Idea of Perfection (2001) - Kate Grenville - 9
Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 9
Home Fire (2018) - Kamila Shamsie - 9
The Lacuna (2010) - Barbara Kingsolver - 9
When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) - Linda Grant - 9
An American Marriage (2019) - Tayari Jones - 8.5
Larry’s Party (1998) - Carol Shields - 8.5
Bel Canto (2002) - Ann Patchett - 8.5
Small Island (2004) - Andrea Levy - 8.5
A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999) - Suzanne Berne - 8.5
May We Be Forgiven (2013) - A. M. Homes - 8
The Tiger’s Wife (2011) - Téa Obreht - 8
On Beauty (2006) - Zadie Smith - 8
A Spell of Winter (1996) - Helen Dunmore - 8
The Road Home (2008) - Rose Tremain - 7.5
The Glorious Heresies (2016) - Lisa McInerney - 7.5
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005) - Lionel Shriver - 7.5
The Song of Achilles (2012) - Madeline Miller - 7
Home (2009) - Marilynne Robinson - 7
Fugitive Pieces (1997) - Anne Michaels - 6.5
The Power (2017) - Naomi Alderman - 5
So, as of now, that’s my final ranking of the Women’s Prize winners! What a great selection of books. A much more manageable task than the Booker Prize winners, and hugely rewarding. Over the next few weeks or so I’ll be writing this up as a summary article, much like my Booker ‘worst to best’ list which seems popular on here.
I think this will be (for now) my last comprehensive read-through of a specific prize, and I’ll be dotting around a bit more in my reading. But let’s see!
Next up
A few more upcoming releases, I feel…
