The Book of Form and Emptiness

Told from the third-person limited point of view of books, as a collective stand-in for all books both written, in progress, and to-be-written, the epigraph introduces the idea that all books have a beginning. Regardless of the events prior to a book, a book “must start somewhere” (1) out of necessity.

Benny Oh, the teenage boy referred to in the title of the prologue and the novel’s protagonist, addresses the readers of this book. He encourages them to accept that all things, including books, are able to communicate. He explains the nature of Made things, or objects that have been crafted by humans and have absorbed the emotions of those humans. Once a person accepts that there are voices inside all things, how that person interacts with the voices can be “Music or madness. It’s totally up to you” (4). Benny explains that Made things in particular can have polyphonic voices as a result of several humans having contributed to their design and production.