In Ruth Ozeki’s “The Book and Form and Emptiness” (Viking, 560 pp., ★★★★ out of four, out Tuesday), 13-year-old Benny Oh hears voices.
Try this if you have a hard time meditating
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When a sparrow strikes a window in his classroom, the other children return to their work because they “were accustomed to death, and this was a minor one.” But the glass knows it has killed the bird and starts to whimper, “to vibrate as its cries grew shrill.” Because the window is crying, Benny can no longer concentrate on his schoolwork. After he starts pounding on the glass to get it to shut up, he’s sent to the principal’s office.
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In some ways this episode could be read as an early symptom of mental illness, and Ozeki leaves that door open. But as narrated, Benny’s banging on the glass is a perfectly reasonable response to the heartache underlying everything in our world. Though Benny gets sent to the principal, then a therapist and finally a children’s psychiatric ward, maybe his is the most rational response to a consumer culture that positions material goods as the sources of our wellbeing.
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Benny’s had a hard year. His father died in a shocking accident the year before, and though his mother Annabelle loves him and wants to do best by him, she too is overwhelmed by the objects in her life. She hoards things to numb the pain of her husband’s death, making her most meaningful emotional connections with teapots and empty picture frames and decades-old newspapers, in the process becoming as much an outsider to the human world as her son.
Given his mother’s distractions, it’s all too easy for Benny to start skipping school and to head instead to the public library, where he finds peace in the voices of books. There he meets likeminded souls in the unhoused people who find refuge in the stacks. They also see the life within of the object world, and know that books themselves have especially pleasing voices. As the novel itself tells us, “We do our best to bring you pleasure and sustain your belief in the gravity of being human. We care about your feelings and believe in you completely.”
Yes, that’s “The Book and Form and Emptiness” itself talking to us. In another book that metatextual overlay might feel too clever or precious, but this novel’s earnest, self-deprecating voice merges effortlessly into Ozeki’s theme of the overlooked agency of objects.
Though Ozeki handled similar topics with perhaps more agility in her debut novel, “My Year of Meats,” this novel’s meditative pacing perfectly suits its open-hearted contemplation. The book’s self-awareness allows it to comically hedge and tiptoe, to digress into diatribes into the “false dichotomies and hegemonic hierarchies of materialist colonizers” only to catch itself and sheepishly apologize: “Sorry. That turned into a rant. No reader likes a rant. As a book, we should know better.”
“The Book of Form and Emptiness” is concerned foremost with the outsiders in our world, the ones who hear voices, who are friendless, who fall into addiction and self-harm. It’s concerned, too, with the ultimate outsiders, the objects that we produce and discard, produce and discard. It is both profound and fun, a loving indictment of our consumer culture. As the novel asks the reader turning the pages, “has it ever occurred to you that books have feelings, too?”
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These are the great new books of 2021 that got ★★★½ and ★★★★ (out of four) reviews from USA TODAY critics, starting with “Beautiful World, Where Are You,” by Sally Rooney · ★★★★ · “An intimate and piercingly smart story about sex and friendship that finds the profound in the everyday.” Read the review.
“Matrix,” by Lauren Groff · ★★★★ · “‘Matrix’ is the award-winning author’s sixth book and fourth novel, and it’s a relentless exhibition of Groff’s freakish talent. In just over 250 pages, she gives us a character study to rival Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell or Robert Caro’s Robert Moses.” Read the review.
“Seeing Ghosts,” by Kat Chow · ★★★½ · “We all have our ghosts that need witnessing, for their sake and for ours. In baring her memories and her soul, Chow reminds us why this task is so important, and how it lets us heal.” Read the review.
“The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence,” by Stephen Kurczy · ★★★½ · “Setting out to explore how dependence on technology affects lives by immersing himself where it doesn’t, Kurczy discovered that not everything added up in The Quiet Zone.” Read the review.
“Afterparties,” by Anthony Veasna So · ★★★½ · “So’s death marks the loss of a writer who savvily wrote about identity crises in immigrant families without lapsing into worn tropes about assimilation.” Read the review.
“The Shimmering State,” by Meredith Westgate · ★★★½ · “With clear reference to the U.S. opioid crisis, ‘The Shimmering State’ spins a compelling story about what a person will do to relieve pain – and what is lost in that release.” Read the review.
“Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis,” by Samantha Montano · ★★★½ · “Montano asks all the right questions. Will we live in a world of feeble reaction or planned response, a you’re-on-your-own landscape of ‘check lists and go-bags,’ or what Montano calls ‘disaster justice,’ marked by organized efforts and political will? Our lives depend on the answers.” Read the review.
“Falling,” by T.J. Newman · ★★★½ · “The plot’s construction is elevator-pitch gold: Bill Hoffman, captain of a Coastal Airlines flight headed from LAX to JFK, learns that his family has been abducted, and if he doesn’t crash his plane and kill all the souls aboard, Hoffman’s wife and two children will die. Oh, and someone onboard is a co-conspirator, so no funny business.” Read the review.
“Not a Happy Family,” by Shari Lapena · ★★★½ · “With every clue, every lie exposed and every truth revealed, Lapena keeps the reader guessing right up to the very end. And once there, Lapena manages to leave us wanting even more.” Read the review.
“Filthy Animals,” by Brandon Taylor · ★★★★ · “Taylor is an important literary talent, not least for his ability to render the familiar into the shockingly unfamiliar. Full of beauty and harshness, the complex and startling stories of ‘Filthy Animals’ will stick with readers long after the pages are read.” Read the review.
“First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents,” by Gary Ginsberg · ★★★½ · “Ginsberg, a journalist and one-time political operative, profiles the confidants of nine U.S. presidents – pals of pols, if you will. These influential intimates, mostly out of public view, helped their respective commanders in chief chill out, strategize and make history.” Read the review.
“Survive the Night,” by Riley Sager · ★★★½ · “The novel satisfies like a summer blockbuster, nearly demands you stay until the final scenes and the lights come up.” Read the review.
“Dream Girl,” by Laura Lippman · ★★★½ · “Lippman’s sharp and timely thriller is a fast read, one that will surely please her many longtime devotees as well as attract new and enthusiastic fans.” Read the review.
“The Burning Blue: The Untold Story of Christa McAuliffe and NASA’s Challenger Disaster,” by Kevin Cook · ★★★★ · “Cook’s crisply crafted journalism and perceptive take on the personalities that shaped the Challenger mission – along with NASA’s struggles and failures – make for a riveting narrative and complex cross-weave of themes.” Read the review.
“How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America,” by Clint Smith · ★★★½ · “By traveling to former plantations, cemeteries and beach communities and dealing with Confederate monuments, prison conditions and Lost Cause nostalgia, Smith, a staff writer at ‘The Atlantic’, aims to show how what happened scarcely over 150 years ago can’t help but cast a shadow on what’s going on now, especially not when for the price of a bus ticket you can be taken back to the scenes of the crime.” Read the review.
“King Richard: An American Tragedy,” by Michael Dobbs · ★★★★ · “This fast-paced opus would be a rollicking fun read, a beach book even, if it weren’t so doggone real – and if it wasn’t so reminiscent of recent machinations in our nation’s capital. But fun or not, this is an important book at this moment in our tortured political history.” Read the review.
“One Last Stop,” by Casey McQuiston · ★★★½ · “’Red, White and Royal Blue’ author McQuiston has done it again, thoughtfully crafting complex and lovable characters that fall in love under unique circumstances.” Read the review.
“The Bookshop of Second Chances,” by Jackie Fraser · ★★★½ · “Author Fraser proves love is often best the second time around with a romance that is perfectly realistic about imperfectly real people.” Read the review.
“Talk Bookish to Me,” by Kate Bromley · ★★★½ · “Bromely does a deft job at keeping the twists and turns of this reunion realistic and utterly romantic.” Read the review.
“Films of Endearment: A Mother, a Son and the ’80s Films That Defined Us,” by Michael Koresky · ★★★½ · “’Films of Endearment’ moves with a beautiful universality that will inspire readers not only to revisit the ’80s films of the book, but to set out on film journeys of their own.” Read the review.
“Project Hail Mary,” by Andy Weir · ★★★½ · “‘Hail Mary’ has the same strong storytelling as ‘The Martian’ and if you dug Weir’s original self-published hit or the Oscar-nominated Matt Damon film, get ready to enjoy this, too.” Read the review.
“Little and Often,” by Trent Preszler · ★★★★ · “‘Little and Often’ proves to be a rich tale of self-discovery and reconciliation. Resonating with Robert Pirsig’s classic ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,’ it is a profound father-and-son odyssey that discovers the importance of the beauty of imperfection and small triumphs that make extraordinary happen.” Read the review.
“Broken (in the best possible way),” by Jenny Lawson · ★★★★ · “‘Broken’ is Lawson at her best. The blogger, humorist and author – whose books include ‘Let’s Pretend This Never Happened,’ ‘Furiously Happy’ and ‘You Are Here’ – has written a collection of essays that beautifully balances belly laughs with gut-wrenching truths.” Read the review.
“The Five Wounds,” by Kirstin Valdez Quade · ★★★½ · “’Wounds’ is based on a story in Quade’s excellent 2015 debut collection, ‘Night at the Fiestas,’ and for her first novel she expands the cast of characters while intensifying the traumas.” Read the review.
“Red Island House,” by Andrea Lee · ★★★½ · “‘Red Island House’ becomes a unique, surprising work – at once a psychological novel, a novel of place and a novel about relationships.” Read the review.
“Honey Girl,” by Morgan Rogers · ★★★★ · “Sprinkled with stardust, Rogers’ prose is poetic, earnest and existential, making for a coming-of-age story that reminds us we figure out who we are and what our place is in the world over and over.” Read the review.
“Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic,” by Glenn Frankel · ★★★★ · “A masterfully structured study bursting with detail and context… Frankel puts it all together with narrative verve, telling a propulsive tale about creativity, commerce and loss.” Read the review.
“Dial A for Aunties,” by Jesse Q. Sutanto · ★★★★ · “Sutanto brilliantly infuses comedy and culture into the unpredictable rom-com/murder mystery mashup.” Read the review.
“Siri, Who Am I?,” by Sam Tschida · ★★★½ · “Tschida took me on a wild ride in the quick read with endless turns and a happily-ever-after ending fit for a Friday night, feel-good rom-com movie.” Read the review.
“Klara and the Sun,” by Kazuo Ishiguro · ★★★½ · “‘Klara and the Sun’ is ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ by way of Steven Spielberg’s ‘A.I.’ absent sentimentality. No honest observer of humanity will be much surprised by the endpoint of Klara’s journey, though the emotional gut-punch might still come as a shock.” Read the review.
“Meet You in the Middle,” by Devon Daniels · ★★★½ · “Set in Washington DC in the aftermath of the polarizing 2016 election, ‘Meet You in the Middle’ feels more timely than ever following the even-more-divisive 2020 election.” Read the review.
“The Girls Are All So Nice Here,” by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn · ★★★★ · “‘The Girls Are All So Nice Here’ kept me up all night – literally. I tore through the book in less than 24 hours, forcing my eyes to stay open as if the remaining pages wouldn’t be there in the morning.” Read the review.
“The Dating Plan,” by Sara Desai · ★★★½ · “Sara Desai returns with another thoughtful, goofy and sexy enemies-to-lovers plot that explores first crushes, second chances and familial love.” Read the review.
“The Four Winds,” by Kristin Hannah · ★★★½ · “‘The Four Winds’ is epic and transporting, a stirring story of hardship and love that is likely to lead to a film adaptation.” Read the review.
“The Sky Blues,” by Robbie Couch · ★★★½ · “‘The Sky Blues’ is exactly the kind of teenage romantic comedy that LGBTQ youth – really all youth – need right now.” Read the review.
“Mike Nichols: A Life,” by Mark Harris · ★★★½ · “Harris, a proven scholar of Hollywood, writes brilliantly and gathers momentum with deeply researched, fascinating forensic passages about the challenges and conflicts of Nichols’ great projects.” Read the review.
“The Removed,” by Brandon Hobson · ★★★½ · “It’s a surprisingly magnetic and eerie book, like a concrete brick that cracks open to reveal a sparkling geode, throwing off a strange light.” Read the review.
“Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It,” by Ethan Kross · ★★★½ · “Kross may be a scientist by trade, but with ‘Chatter’ he proves himself a deft storyteller who, through levity and wit, creates an easily digestible work on the brain, how it works and how we can quiet our often relentless chatter.” Read the review.
“Let Me Tell You What I Mean,” by Joan Didion · ★★★★ · “Slim and elegant as Didion’s public persona remains at age 86, the book traces her journey and development as a writer of magisterial (a word she would never use) command and finely measured style.” Read the review.
“The Prophets,” by Robert Jones Jr. · ★★★★ · “‘The Prophets’ is packed with otherworldly and supremely artful storytelling, and readers will surely get lost in a radiant romance.” Read the review.
“A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself,” by Peter Ho Davies · ★★★½ · “The bulk of this slim, gemlike novel is about the son that the parents (all unnamed) do have, constructed from the brief scenes of joy, exasperation and fear that define parenthood.” Read the review.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘The Book of Form and Emptiness’ a masterful meditation on consumer culture from Ruth Ozeki
