the book of form and emptiness ruth ozeki

Her first two novels, My Year of Meats (1998) and All Over Creation (2003), which she describes as “a deep-dive into potatoes”, grew out of her concerns about climate change and industrial agriculture (her father’s family were farmers in Wisconsin). Every novel takes me longer – this is not a good trendĪ passionate environmentalist and feminist, Ozeki grew up reading Rachel Carson and imbibing the “political consciousness” of the 1970s, she says. And it is true that this tale of a mother and son finding their voices and a way out of the mess of their lives is both deeply affecting and uplifting. But, as with all Ozeki’s novels, The Book of Form and Emptiness doesn’t shy away from all-too-real issues – global heating, consumerism, mental illness – or asking the big questions: what is real? Is there a limit to human desires for more? And yet the chair of the Women’s prize described it as “a complete joy” and critics have been drawn to her “calm, dry, methodical good humour”.

Philosophically serious and formally playful (the book itself is talking to us), this cacophonous novel sometimes seems as crowded and whimsical as Annabelle’s eclectic collections. Clinging to her job as an archivist, Annabelle has let their house overflow with newspaper cuttings: they are metaphorically drowning in grief, garbage and too much news. His mother, Annabelle, has become a hoarder, and in a sense inanimate things (her husband’s shirts, snow globes, a yellow teapot) are also speaking to her. It tells the story of 14-year-old Benny, who starts hearing the voices of everyday objects after his father’s death.

Ozeki can surely lay claim to being the first Zen Buddhist priest to take the Women’s prize, which she has won for her fourth novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness. Coolly elegant in black, despite the heatwave, the 66-year-old writer has the sort of glow not often seen in post-award ceremony interviews. She was so convinced she wasn’t going to win ( Meg Mason and Elif Shafak were the frontrunners) she had planned “a full schedule” for the day. “A very short one,” she says when we meet at her hotel later. T he first thing the Japanese American author Ruth Ozeki did the morning after winning the Women’s prize for fiction was meditate.

The book of form and emptiness ruth ozeki