The Book of Form and Emptiness Audiobook By Ruth Ozeki cover art

The Book of Form and Emptiness

A Novel

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The Book of Form and Emptiness

By: Ruth Ozeki
Narrated by: Kerry Shale, Ruth Ozeki
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About this listen

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction

“No one writes like Ruth Ozeki—a triumph.”—Matt Haig, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library

“Inventive, vivid, and propelled by a sense of wonder.”—TIME

“If you’ve lost your way with fiction over the last year or two, let The Book of Form and Emptiness light your way home.”—David Mitchell, Booker Prize-finalist author of Cloud Atlas

A boy who hears the voices of objects all around him; a mother drowning in her possessions; and a Book that might hold the secret to saving them both—the brilliantly inventive new novel from the Booker Prize-finalist Ruth Ozeki

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki—bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.

©2021 Ruth Ozeki (P)2021 Penguin Audio
Fantasy Fiction Heartfelt Magical Realism Fiction
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Critic reviews

“[A] Borgesian, Zen Buddhist parable of consumerism . . . [Ozeki] endows objects and animals with anima, the breath of life . . . [she] ensouls the world . . . There’s powerful magic here . . . Ozeki is unusually patient with her characters, even the rebarbative ones, and she is able to record the subtle peculiarities of other classes of beings that more overeager writers would probably miss . . . Ozeki gives us a metaphor for our very own American consumption disorder, our love-hate relationship with the stuff we produce and can’t let go of.”New York Times Book Review

“A masterful meditation on consumer culture . . . 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?’”USA Today

“[A] tale of sorrow, danger and tentative redemption serves as the springboard for extended meditations on the interdependence of all beings, the magic of books, the disastrous ecological and spiritual effects of unchecked consumerism and more . . . one of Ozeki’s gifts as a novelist is the ability to enfold provocative intellectual material within a human story grounded in sharply observed social detail . . . The Book itself has a marvelous voice: adult, ironic, affirming at every turn the importance of books as a repository of humanity’s deepest wisdom and highest aspirations.”Washington Post

What listeners say about The Book of Form and Emptiness

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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one opinion

The story was interesting and moved along nicely. The portrayal of women's voices was irritating.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Wieldy, hard, loaded with cries

This book is a zen Buddhist story of Life through the cries of a mother and son after the death of Kenji, Japanese born clarinetist, husband and father, alcoholic, smoker of marihuana, and caring, funny , beloved Human. May he rest in peace and be reborn to bring us more stories!

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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I have to agree with some other reviewers

I love Ruth Ozeki, and I liked this book a lot, but the narrator is just not good. His voices for the characters, especially the main characters Annabelle and Benny, were embarrassing and annoying. It didn't ruin the book for me - I was able to put up with it - but it did detract from my enjoyment of it. Some of his accents were OK, some of them were really bad and/or really inconsistent, e.g. Cory the Librarian - I *think* he was going for a Jamaican accent but it was really hard to tell.

Otherwise, I love Ozeki's blending of great characters (both human and other) that you grow to really care about, a story where the stakes are very high, and the way she brings in Buddhist and (I think) Shinto ideas. Two of my fave characters, and who I thought Kerry Shale actually did well with were the poet/hobo Slavaj (I may have his name spelled wrong. It's an audiobook...haven't seen it printed) and the Aleph. Overall, if you can stand the narrator, you'll enjoy this book. Do give the sample a listen before you buy.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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Narration Speaks for Itself

This book captivated me with its originality and well-drawn characters until the last portion when the narrator inexplicably changed her voicing of the mom and thus lost the character herself. Who goes from talking like Georgette on the Mary Tyler Moore Show to speaking like an entirely different person? This ruined the book for me.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Great Reader

The reader does a great job. Each character was properly characterized by this talented gentleman.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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same as what every else is saying

Just saying it again with the hopes that maybe someone will decide to do another production of this book. Sorry Kerry Shale, but the character voices really messed this up. And the worst part is, his regular narration voice is pretty good. I don't understand why he had to go so over the top with the two main characters. And this isn't just an apparently common subjective opinion. The choices he made were objectively wrong. He makes Benny's voice way too dynamic when is often described in the text as lacking affect. He makes Annabelle's voice rough and loud (almost like Lola from Big Mouth) when she is supposed to be kind of soft spoken and fragile.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Beautiful book. Terrible narration.

Everything about this book lends itself to reading the bound copy. Do yourself a favor and READ this book. On the surface this is a story about loss (and growth) and how we navigate/cope. Dig deeper and you find the Heart and Soul of the book is about interconnectedness and impermanence....and so many other layers woven in between. Ozeki brilliantly breathes life into The Book, not just through her story, but in form.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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A fabulous story!

What a genuine work of art. So original, heart touching and thought provoking! I loved every minute of it!!

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Pages tell the story’s.

First book I have read by Ruth Ozeki. It was interesting keeping an open mind about how our minds are what helps to shape us. Never giving thought about the thoughts of objects but thankful for the perspective. It was a different read for me.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A kind insight into mental illness

Well-crafted story. The portrayal of mental illness is romanticized somewhat, but it’s refreshing to see it shown in a more positive light.
The actor was great with the male voices, but the cloying voice used for the mother’s character was irritating and condescending.

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