The Book of Form and Emptiness

Abstract

A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and learning to take charge of one\u27s life, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being. Benny Oh is a fourteen year-old boy living in the Pacific Northwest who, shortly after his father dies, begins to hear voices. The voices belong to all the things around him, speaking. He doesn\u27t understand what they are saying, but he can sense their emotional tone; many are angry and full of pain. Benny\u27s voice-hearing is heightened because his depressed and lonely mother, Anabelle, is a hoarder. The first voices Benny hears belong to the things in Annabelle\u27s growing hoard, but soon he is hearing voices not just at home, but on the street and at school. When he can\u27t escape the voices, he starts to talk back to them. People begin to think he is mentally ill. Benny escapes to the public library whenever he can, and slowly a strange new world opens up to him as he gets to know its denizens. He meets and falls in love with a nineteen year-old freegan installation artist named \u27The Aleph,\u27 who introduces him to the \u27Bottleman,\u27 an older, homeless, Slovenian poet in a wheelchair who also hears voices. Benny discovers there are special places in the Library, anomalous or paranormal locations where \u27things\u27 happen. As the novel unfolds, Benny\u27s attempt to deal with the voices and figure out what is real escalates as his mother faces eviction and custody issues, as both struggle to remake themselves and find their own power and agency. With its blend of sympathetic characters, a strong forward-moving plot, and a vigorous engagement with everything from our attachment to material possessions to the climate crisis, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki--brilliant, playful, poignant, humane, and heartbreaking. Provided by publisher.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eng_books/1010/thumbnail.jp