The Book of Form and Emptiness cover art

The Book of Form and Emptiness

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

The Book of Form and Emptiness

By: Ruth Ozeki
Narrated by: Kerry Shale, Ruth Ozeki
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £27.99

Buy Now for £27.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022.

When a book and a reader are meant for each other, both of them know it....

After the tragic death of his father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house and sound variously pleasant, angry or sad. Then his mother develops a hoarding problem, and the voices grow more clamorous. So Benny seeks refuge in the silence of a large public library. There he meets a mesmerising street artist with a smug pet ferret; a homeless philosopher-poet; and his very own Book, who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

Blending unforgettable characters with jazz, climate change and our attachment to material possessions, this is classic Ruth Ozeki – bold, humane and heartbreaking.

©2021 Ruth Ozeki (P)2021 Canongate Books Ltd. Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Magical Realism Fantasy Magic Tear-jerking Heartfelt Thought-Provoking

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Timecode of a Face cover art
The Poisonwood Bible cover art
Pictures of You cover art
Paris in the Present Tense cover art
Night Terrors Volumes 1 - 3 cover art
Waiting for the Barbarians cover art
The Tricky Part cover art
Great Expectations cover art
Wuthering Heights cover art
The Time Traveler's Wife cover art
The Secrets of Lost Stones cover art
Tell Me What I Am cover art
Dreadnought cover art
These Tangled Vines cover art
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Overall, I think I really enjoyed the story but I don't quite know. Bits of it I found really heavy going. I think I might have done better if I had read it myself instead of listening.
I didn't like the narration. Some of the voices were heavily accented - overly so, in my view. But the thing that stuck in my throat was how the narrator made Annabel (the mother) sound like a complete moron. It spoilt the story for me. Somewhere towards the end, the narrator seemed to find a little empathy for her and toned down the airhead voice.

Very mixed feeling about this one

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story is excellent and has so much meaning behind it. It talks about relationships with objects through the story.
The narration when performing voices was irritating. Why do they have to shout and the accents and voices mix up at times. I only persevered because of the story. And listened to it at speed.

Deep and meaningful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narrator is simply brilliant. The novel makes you think about so many things. Heartbreaking, joyful and funny at the same time. Very philosophical, but playfully. I loved it!

Beautiful.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An extraordinary book, exploring mental ill health, cultural pressures, modern and sustainable living and a wealth of amazing characters. Just give yourself up to this and let it move you along. The book knows where it’s going. Enjoy the ride.

Wonderful and full of wonder

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
For a rather unusual - long - book, I couldn’t believe the sudden ‘and they all lived happily ever after’. Ruined a story that interestingly explored mental health difficulties and homelessness. I liked the characters and the story development, but the ending trashed the whole thing for me. The performance was interesting, kind of amazing and excellent in parts, and annoying and off putting too. Would not be able to recommend this to anyone I’m afraid.

What a terrible terrible ending.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’ve had to stop listening at the beginning of Part 2 as I found the characterisation (infantilisation) of the mother extremely annoying. It made me worry I was getting a totally skewed impression of the book, so I’m going to read it instead. Waste of a credit.

The voicing of the mother was too annoying to continue

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
There is lots of good stuff in this book. The depiction of hearing voices, of humanity in unexpected places, of the slow spiralling of a life out of control. The sections of the Tidy Magic book read by Ruth Ozeki, and the exploration of our relationship with stuff (including the contrast between Japan and America) are gentle and lyrical. But the pace is very slow, the scenery repetitive, some of the characterisation not entirely believable (Alice) and as much of the subject matter is quite dark, it felt like a very long haul. I also did not entirely enjoy the narration - whilst technically good, I felt that the voices used for Annabel, Dr M and Benny were unsympathetic, making the story more dismal than needed. I absolutely loved Ruth Ozeki's A Tale For The Time Being and was looking forward to this - it doesn't remotely reach the class of the former. Perhaps if half the length and more simply read, I'd have rated it higher - it IS good, just hard work.

A little slow

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’m very sensitive to noise and the constant change of voices was very jarring. The female characters sound like a joke and that horrible gruff angry voice in Benny’s head is horrible. I like to listen to a book as I go to sleep and that horrible voice makes it so hard to stay immersed. I LOVE the story, it’s very magic- surrealist, just a shame the narrator got in my nerves. This is the issue with most audiobooks

Wasted potential poor narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Complex and involving. I loved it.

That’s it. That’s my review Audible. No more words.

Read it

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I’ve only listened to a few hours so far but I already know I love this book. It’s my kind of thing completely. Not the story (although that is really good) but the writing. I can’t say why, it’s just something. When I start a book like this one I think ‘ah thank goodness’
I’m quite fussy, many books and narrators I can’t stand, I have to stop listening, they bore annoy and irritate but this is the opposite. For me it’s the novel equivalent of all the beautiful, comforting, soothing and interesting things in life! The narrator does a great job in my view.

Just my kind of book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews