This review will contain spoilers

Nao is a 16 year old girl living in Tokyo who is having a difficult time at school. She cannot turn to her parents because her mother is dealing with her father’s severe depression.

Nao decides to start a diary about the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun, as a way to find courage. Years later Ruth, a novelist living in Desolation Sound, British Columbia finds a locked box containing Nao’s diary, a packet of letters and a composition notebook. Nao’s diary will change the lives of both women in a profound way.

A Tale For The Time Being (2013) by Ruth Ozeki has been on my radar for a few years now. I love books about diaries and the message in a bottle premise really appealed to me. But I struggled to get through parts of this book.

The problem wasn’t the writing. Ruth Ozeki is very talented. And A Tale For The Time Being tackles topics such as bullying, climate change, suicide, American wars, the Fukushima disaster, Zen Buddhism, consumerism, the weight of past generations. These are weighty subjects but I am not sure they all belong in the same novel.

We also learn about Nao and Ruth’s lives in alternating chapters. Ruth is grieving the death of her mother and facing writer’s block. Nao is bullied by her classmates and the magnitude of bullying is extreme. I had trouble imagining that any school would allow bullying at this level.

But there is one character in A Tale For The Time Being who has a true to life storyline. Nao’s great uncle, Haruki, who was a young soldier in the Japanese army during World War II. Haruki was trained as were other young men in his unit to go on kamikaze missions. You couldn’t refuse. It would mean terrible disgrace to one’s family. Nao includes Haruki’s diary with her own in the box that makes its way to Ruth and it makes for powerful reading.

A Tale For The Time Being covers many subjects but learning about Zen Buddhism and Haruki’s experiences as a soldier stood out for me. Haruki wanted to live. And it will be through his diary that Nao, her father and Ruth learn about the value of life and how to embrace the future.