Awards
Winner of the Imus American Book Award and the Kiriyama Book Prize.
Synopses & Reviews
A brilliant, unforgettable, and long-awaited novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki “A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.
Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.
Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.
Review
"A sexy and funny cross-cultural tale of two seemingly disparate women that is a feast that leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next." Newsweek
Review
"It's juicy, it's tender, it's bloody, it's sizzling." St. Louis Post Dispatch
Review
"There is an ardent passion to the center of this novel...rare and provocative." USA Today
Review
"...a novel as juicy as a good burger." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Robust, funny and insistently educational in tone, My Year of Meats deals with the cross-pollination of people and values, toxicity in meat, synthetic estrogens, camera angles and the ever-pertinent issue of perspective and reliability in the media. The only problem is that Ozeki's novel sometimes feels as much like a Lifetime movie as a complex, hard-hitting exposé." Salon
Synopsis
Veteran filmmaker Ruth Ozeki's novel has been hailed as "one of the heartiest and yes, meatiest debuts in years" (Glamour). It tells the story of a year in the lives of two ordinary women on opposite ends of the earth, brought together by a convergence of extraordinary circumstances. Jane, a struggling filmmaker in New York, is given her big break a chance to travel through the U.S. to produce a Japanese television program sponsored by an American meat exporting business. But along the way, she discovers some unsavory truths about love, honor, and a particularly damaging hormone called DES that wreaks havoc with her uterus. Meanwhile, Akiko, a painfully thin Japanese woman struggling with bulimia, is being pressured by her child-craving husband to put some meat on her bones literally. How Jane's and Akiko's lives intersect taps into some of the deepest concerns of our time how the past informs the present and how we live and love in an ever-shrinking world.
Synopsis
The perfect fiction companion to The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of FoodNow that Michael Pollan's New York Times bestsellers have opened up a national dialogue about where food really comes from, conscientious readers everywhere will want to devour My Year of Meats. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by the American meat-exporting industry, she begins to uncover some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a very dangerous hormone called DES. A modern-day take on Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, veteran filmmaker Ruth Ozeki's novel has been hailed as "rare and provocative" (USA Today) and "up-to-the-minute" (Chicago Tribune).
Synopsis
A cross-cultural tale of two women brought together by the intersections of television and industrial agriculture, fertility and motherhood, life and lovethe breakout hit by the celebrated author of A Tale for the Time Being
Ruth Ozekis mesmerizing debut novel has captivated readers and reviewers worldwide. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, she uncovers some unsavory truths about love, fertility, and a dangerous hormone called DES. Soon she will also cross paths with Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife struggling to escape her overbearing husband. Hailed by USA Today as rare and provocative” and awarded the Kirayama Prize for Literature of the Pacific Rim, My Year of Meats is a modern-day take on Upton Sinclairs The Jungle for fans of Michael Pollan, Margaret Atwood, and Barbara Kingsolver.
About the Author
Ruth L. Ozeki has worked in television and film for the last twelve years. Her documentary and dramatic films have been shown on PBS, at the Sundance Film Festival, and at colleges and universities across the country, and she has received numerous grants and awards for her work. She divides her time between New York City and British Columbia.