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Jun 01, 2013SuzeParker rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
Numerous contemporary themes -- bullying, suicide, unemployment -- underscore the author's primary theme, the exploration of time in all its iterations. The main character, Ruth Jones, discovers a Japanese schoolgirl's diary washed ashore on her Canadian island. The diary was written several years earlier and, as she reads about the girl's plan to commit suicide, Ruth becomes increasingly desperate to discover whether the girl, Nao, is still alive. The wide-ranging book is beautifully written, but in parts becomes so broad and philosophical that it loses the thread of the wonderful main story. I don't want to contemplate quantum physics and Schrödinger’s cat when I'm reading a novel. Other parts of the book were just odd -- a possibly magical crow and words that disappear and reappear in the diary? At that point, I wondered if the book was simply going to reveal that Ruth had gone mad. Anyway, the strength of the book is the link between "time beings" Ruth and Nao and the surprising ways their lives have entertwined across time and distance.