The Book of Form and Void

A teenager, Benny Oh, begins to hear voices a year after the death of his beloved father, a jazz musician. At first, they belong to the things he has at home—clothes, Christmas decorations, food—and Benny can feel their tone and emotions, realizing that some are happy, while others are filled with suffering. 

Benny's mother, caught between widowhood, financial difficulties, and a tendency to buy and keep things she doesn't need, ends up unconsciously intensifying the voices that disturb her son, making them louder and more intrusive. 

Benny chooses to ignore them, but the voices begin to follow him outside the house too, through the streets and around school, eventually leading him to the refuge of the public library, where the objects are more polite and respect the silence. There, Benny discovers a new world, falling in love with a hypnotic artist and meeting a philosopher vagabond who encourages him to ask the right questions. 

Ah! And Benny also discovers his own Book—yet another thing that speaks—which tells him his life story and teaches him to listen only to what really matters and to find his own voice in the inevitable harshness of the journey.