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Beloved author Ruth Ozeki returns with her first novel since A Tale for the Time Being (2013), a finalist for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In The Book of Form and Emptiness, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices emanating from the objects in his house. While he can't understand what they’re saying, they each have an emotional tone that affects him deeply. When his mother develops a hoarding problem, the noises intensify and follow him out of the house.

Benny finds refuge at the public library, where the objects are well behaved and know how to speak in whispers. Here he meets a cast of sympathetic characters, whose offbeat lifestyles reveal for him a way forward, and his very own Book, which narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With her signature imagination and sense of wonder, Ruth has written an indelible story that reminds us, at this tenuous moment, that sometimes the best way to make sense of all the world's noise is to turn inward, tune inward, and practice better listening.

"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, author of Cloud Atlas) and join Kepler's for a discussion of this timely balm of a novel.

Photo of Ruth Ozeki by Danielle Tait