Do you know what a time being is? It's someone who lives in time') may be irritating, with her constant tugging on the reader's sleeve and her hysterical emoticons, but it's hard not to feel sympathy for this beleaguered teenager, or to admire the power with which Ozeki evokes her plight. No wonder she's hooked on the sad soap opera of Nao's Tokyo life. Ruth's daily life consists of Google searches, speculations about a mysterious crow, pedagogically driven information-exchanges with her husband and neighbours, internet access breakdowns and missing cats.

The two protagonists are chalk and cheese. But it gives Ozeki the chance to switch between the now of Ruth's quietly claustrophobic life with her artist-naturalist husband Oliver and the turbulent now of Nao, whose story begins in Tokyo at the turn of the new century. Just how long has her testament been bobbing about on the waves? Is Nao a tsunami victim, or does her possible suicide predate the tragedy? The fact that Ruth is itching to know may make her decision to read Nao's story episodically, in the on-off rhythm in which it was written (rather than to speed-read to the end and find out), feel contrived. She is now back in Japan, miserable, and contemplating 'dropping out of time' altogether. She was born to Japanese parents, but her heart belongs to Silicon Valley, where she spent her happy formative years, and she feels just as at ease in English as Japanese. By either coincidence or karma, Nao also happens to be a kind of Japanese-American, and therefore a bit like Ruth.

A tale for the time being author