Alta Magazine: Be Here Now

“Here we see what’s great about Ozeki: her ability to channel the voices that make her novel hum and sing. By the end, she’s created an expanding universe, a medley of characters and situations, all engaging and intersecting in ways that feel unexpected and inevitable at once… Ozeki is a masterful conductor, and The Book of Form and Emptiness presents a vividly constructed weave.”
— David Ulin, Alta

Chicago Review of Books: Semi-Living Words in The Book of Form and Emptiness

“The Book of Form and Emptiness nurtures stories of human connection—not excluding those inherited through things both collected and discarded—as well as the transcendent magic that so many words can conjure. If one accepts that a novel and its counterparts, limited by form, cannot act as a true looking glass for its reader, then the value of a book is instead measured by a limited number of words that seek to convey and impact our shared realities. In the liminal space of form and emptiness, it is stories, especially those bound safely inside books, that tether us to life. Ozeki’s novels tend to speak for themselves. After all, “[b]ooks will always have the last word, even if no one is around to read them.””
— Caitlin Stout, Chicago Review of Books