A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

An engrossing story about a Japanese girl's diary and the Canadian woman who finds it washed up near her island home, full of thought-provoking material about radioactive flotsam, kamikaze pilots, Zen monks, moral responsibility, and the tangled relationship between writer, reader and narrative. There is a potentially alienating magical element, but it is introduced late in the story, once the characters have been established as real and likeable, and it is made less jarring by relating it to a discussion about quantum theory.