I was still thinking about what she said about waves, and it made me sad because I knew that her little wave was not going to last and soon she would join the sea again, and even though I know you can’t hold on to water, still I gripped her fingers a little more tightly to keep her from leaking away.

Reading A Tale for the Time Being was a wonderful experience - I completely fell under its spell. It all begins with a Hello Kitty lunchbox that washes up on the beach. Ruth, an author, discovers it and finds inside what appears to be a journal and some letters. Within these pages is the story of Nao, a teenage girl from Japan who is really struggling - her father has just lost his job and is suicidal, and she is ruthlessly bullied at school by pupil and teacher alike. Nao has no one in the world she can really talk to (unless you count her amazing great grandmother, Jiko, who is a nun living in the mountains) and she’s contemplating taking her own life...but by the time Ruth is reading this, has she already done it?

I really fell in love with these characters, especially Nao and Jiko who have such a beautiful, real relationship, and I hated putting the book down because I just wanted to know what happened next. Ozeki’s writing pulls you slowly but surely in; she lets you soak in these character’s stories, their lives and personalities, and they feel like they exist somewhere in the world. The book handles mental health in a very real way, never sugarcoating but also never sensationalising, which is very hard to do when a character is suicidal. I miss this story already and urge you to pick it up.