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The Typing Lady: And Other Fictions
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A spellbinding story collection from Booker Prize finalist Ruth Ozeki, about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget, and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned
In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki turns her singular gaze to the short story, exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age. With her distinctive blend of wit, warmth, and deep humanity, she brings us twelve richly imagined stories of characters standing at life’s thresholds—grappling with faded ideals, evolving identities, and the inevitable compromises that shape a life.
A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches with tenderness and unease as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant during a sales meeting, railing against the state of modern literature. A curious grandmother creates a fake online dating profile to spy on her granddaughter’s romantic life—and sets in motion a deception she can’t control.
Spanning eras and geographies—from a New England college town in the 1970s to downtown Manhattan in the 1990s to a moss-covered Pacific Northwest island during the early pandemic—The Typing Lady is an electrifying meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we abandon, and the stories we become. Threaded with the tactile ephemera of writing—typewriters, letters, manuscripts, and disappearing ink—the book reveals how we record ourselves in language, and how language, over time, records us in return.
In this spirited and emotionally resonant collection, award-winning novelist Ruth Ozeki turns her singular gaze to the short story, exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age. With her distinctive blend of wit, warmth, and deep humanity, she brings us twelve richly imagined stories of characters standing at life’s thresholds—grappling with faded ideals, evolving identities, and the inevitable compromises that shape a life.
A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches with tenderness and unease as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant during a sales meeting, railing against the state of modern literature. A curious grandmother creates a fake online dating profile to spy on her granddaughter’s romantic life—and sets in motion a deception she can’t control.
Spanning eras and geographies—from a New England college town in the 1970s to downtown Manhattan in the 1990s to a moss-covered Pacific Northwest island during the early pandemic—The Typing Lady is an electrifying meditation on the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we abandon, and the stories we become. Threaded with the tactile ephemera of writing—typewriters, letters, manuscripts, and disappearing ink—the book reveals how we record ourselves in language, and how language, over time, records us in return.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
Kindle Edition
Expected publication June 2, 2026
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About the author
Ruth Ozeki
20 books6,539 followersRuth Ozeki (born in New Haven, Connecticut) is a Japanese American novelist. She is the daughter of anthropologist Floyd Lounsbury.
Ozeki published her debut novel, My Year of Meats, in 1998. She followed up with All Over Creation in 2003. Her new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, was published on March 12, 2013.
She is married to Canadian land artist Oliver Kellhammer, and the couple divides their time between New York City and Vancouver.
Ozeki published her debut novel, My Year of Meats, in 1998. She followed up with All Over Creation in 2003. Her new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, was published on March 12, 2013.
She is married to Canadian land artist Oliver Kellhammer, and the couple divides their time between New York City and Vancouver.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 23, 2026
Ruth Ozeki is pure literary magic. There’s no other author that could entice me to read an entire book of litfic contemporary short stories and yet she had me glued to my kindle until the wee hours of the morning. The way she switches up her writing style and narration based on each character and each story is nothing short of masterful. Each story highlighted the power of language, of literature, of connection and of the self and I’m as always in awe of Ozeki’s creativity.
February 3, 2026
A spectacular collection of stories. At first, they seemed to be to be unconnected, but after pondering, I realized they are all about love - connection and distance, caring and letting go. They are also about the act of writing and the connection writers make with their readers.
Many of them are set in surroundings that I find familiar: college towns in the northeast, New Haven, Boston. That fit right in with the themes of finding and forgetting. The poem that is both the opening epigraph and part of one of the stories, One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, frames the stories. It begins:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Many of the stories have typewriters in them - not surprising, given the title of the collection - and the store in Cambridge that a character goes into to buy a typewriter was featured in a story in the Boston Globe. The owner tried to find someone to buy it when he retired, but was unable to.
This is the first thing I have read that talks about isolation during the COVID pandemic. It has felt sometimes as if that was a dream, so little of the impact seems to have persisted.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing the ARC of this book.
Many of them are set in surroundings that I find familiar: college towns in the northeast, New Haven, Boston. That fit right in with the themes of finding and forgetting. The poem that is both the opening epigraph and part of one of the stories, One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, frames the stories. It begins:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Many of the stories have typewriters in them - not surprising, given the title of the collection - and the store in Cambridge that a character goes into to buy a typewriter was featured in a story in the Boston Globe. The owner tried to find someone to buy it when he retired, but was unable to.
This is the first thing I have read that talks about isolation during the COVID pandemic. It has felt sometimes as if that was a dream, so little of the impact seems to have persisted.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing the ARC of this book.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Instantly captivating - Ruth Ozeki gets you into her world immediately with this brilliant stories - the voice is intimate, the characters vivid and intriguing and the stories are always at least two of the following: enchanting / haunting / funny / thrilling / melancholy/ witty. I loved them all.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews