The Book of Form and Emptiness
Review of the novel by Ruth Ozeki
This novel has two narrators: a book (or books collectively) and a preadolescent boy, Benny, who has mental issues that can’t be described by conventional psychology. He hears the voices of objects, including books.
These bizarre perspectives prompt the reader to rethink much that we normally take for granted and ignore or undervalue. Hence, this book is revelatory somewhat like Ishiguro’s recent novel Klara, written from the perspective of a robot.
The characters are engaging and there is a plot, but the unfamiliar and quirky perspectives are unforgettable.
The best explanation of the book’s perspective appears on p. 491:
“… agency is a matter of perspective, and were you to ask those books, they would claim the dozing writer is the one who has been chosen. They picked her, and while she is dozing, they are hard at work, colonizing her neural networks, that dark netherworld tucked away int he subconscious she calls her imagination… And then, when she’s finished and the book ventures out into the world, the readers take their turn, and here another kind of comingling occurs. Because the reader is not a passive receptacle for a book’s content. Not at all. You are our collaborators, our conspirators, breathing new life into us. And because every reader is unique, each of you makes each of us mean differently, regardless of what’s written on our pages. Thus, one book, when read by different readers, becomes different books, becomes an ever-changing array of books that flows through human consciousness like a wave. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli. According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their own destinies.”
