One appendix describes a spiritual experiment that calls for snapping your fingers continuously, to experience 'an intimate awareness' of what you've done with your time. There are also footnotes explaining Tokyo fashion trends and appendices on Zen Buddhism. In one chapter, Nao briefly explains the art of origami (the secret is thin paper, if you were wondering). Consider: Ruth's husband is interested in widening gyres and the genus of local crows. Ozeki's prose takes you swiftly through the story, but its lightness means you're just flirting with large topics. A 16-year-old's worldview, however informed by tragedy and an interesting familial background, can be annoyingly blunt. To her credit, Ozeki's grasp of the current teen lexicon is above average, but it's a difficult language to master completely. 'OMG' sits side by side with fun Japanese vocabulary like otaki and hentai, slang for nerd and manga porn. Ozeki stays faithful to the wide-eyed obnoxiousness that all 16-year-olds have. 'No writer, even the most proficient, could re-enact in words the flow of a life lived, and Nao was hardly that skillful,' Ruth admits. Ruth finds Nao's prose as maddening as it is compelling. She drops out of school to escape daily beatings and humiliations. And poor Nao: After growing up in California, she doesn't fit in with her Tokyo classmates. Her mother is unsympathetic and has adopted a hard, feisty attitude.

Her father is so depressed about losing his job that he becomes suicidal, drowning in gambling debt and jumping in front of trains.

Nao finds the life of her great-grandmother much more interesting than her own, but her narrative intercedes anyway.

Ruth a tale for the time being