hmmmm. i love the concept but this was a bit of a miss for me. i just dont really get it, i think? is there even a point that was being made? whatever, i guess they can't all be bangers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ An unusual woman who feels she is a concrete building is desperately searching for real human fluids. An unconventional family of two women, not lovers but sworn to each other to live together when still single at 30. One is dealing with cancer, leading the other to consider her life, children and what a family is. Unusually tender and almost without any subversion of "normal" society.

In this off-kilter collection, Murata brings a grotesque whimsy to her fables of cultural norms . . . Like the author’s novels, this brims with ideas.” — Publishers WeeklyEveryone keeps telling little lies, and that’s how the mirage is created. That’s why it’s beautiful—because it’s a momentary make-believe world.’

Happy Future Foods, resembling space food, clashes with fantasy food and countryside traditions. Not a very strong story in my view, rather didactic on how we are relatively all strange to each others in terms of customs. This collection was both disappointing and unnecessarily disgusting. Not a great start to my reading year… Her first novel, Jyunyū ( Breastfeeding), won the 2003 Gunzo Prize for New Writers. [3] In 2013 she won the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no ( Of Bones, Of Body Heat, Of Whitening City), and in 2014 the Special Prize of the Sense of Gender Award. [4] [5] In 2016 her 10th novel, Konbini ningen ( Convenience Store Person), won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, [6] and she was named one of Vogue Japan's Women of the Year. [7] Konbini ningen has sold over 1.5 million copies in Japan [8] and in 2018 it became her first book to be translated into English, under the title Convenience Store Woman. [9] It has been translated into more than 30 languages. [8]

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As a general rule, the more unusual and creepier the premise, the more obsessed it made me. And I say that while looking at my baffled reading notes for A First Rate Material, which was downright nauseating in its description. But I cannot deny the mastery of the writing style, which compelled me to keep on reading and to question my own moral conventions. I enjoyed this story. I thought it was a cool concept, especially considering how often animals are used for different products. I liked comparing the idea of using animals for products and using humans for products. If animals have been accepted for clothing and furniture for so long why shouldn't humans be accepted as well? Should either be accepted? Most of the stories in this collection are set in the near-future or in an alternate reality where certain characters, often the narrator, finds themselves questioning the social mores so readily accepted by others. Because of this they feel alienated from other people and don't feel that they truly fit into their particular society. Most of the stories question the notion of right and wrong by challenging the characters ethical and moral ideologies (why do they really think that x is bad? is it because they are told that is what they should think? etc etc). In the first story for example our protagonist lives in a society that uses human skin to produce all sorts of objects. While this use of human skin is completely normalized now the protagonist remembers vaguely a time where this was not the case. Her partner, to everyone’s bewilderment, is openly against this practice and refuses to have items that are made of human skin. When his father dies and his skin repurposed, the partner reconsiders his stance. In another story, the main character has a sister who, in a similar fashion to a character from Earthlings, believes she is not a human. This causes others to bully and make fun of her. In the title story, Murata envisions a world where the deceased are made into food for the living in a ceremony of sorts. This ceremony apparently makes people really horny and they tend to have sex after consuming the ‘flesh’ of their loved one. People attach no shame to the act of sex and apparently it is perfectly normal to walk down a street and see pools of semen all over the pavement. Our main character initially claims that she is not keen on the practice but when a colleague she cares for dies suddenly she relishes the meal his relatives make him into. She comes across a man who says he’s gay and decides to give her his sperm. Amongst other things, I found myself wondering how gay people fit in in a society where you only have sex to procreate. I found this scenario particularly illogical. Not so much the eating of the deceased, I mean, endocannibalism was (is?) practised by certain communities, but the whole sex on the streets thing?! Uncomfortable much! Anyhow, we also have a story about a woman who observes other people and describes them as human beings, which kind of implies she is not one. She is particularly obsessed with things such as blood, bile, and other bodily fluids. At one point she observes someone she’s just had a meal with and this happens:

This morning the company was informed that the ceremony will be held tonight. They said the deceased would have wanted as many of us as possible to come along.” Although the usual meal is a rather uninspired miso hot pot designed to disguise the gamey taste of human flesh, Mr. Yamamoto, the deceased of interest, was a gourmand. As a result, he left instructions for the preparation of a complex symphony of tastes all built around himself as the main ingredient. Through the acts of eating and sharing the Yamamoto-based food with another, the protagonist is fully integrated into this new normal, so different from the world she remembers of her childhood, as “Yamamoto’s life was fully absorbed into [her] flesh” (110). In this provocative story, Murata probes the question of social mores and taboos, asking whence they come and why they matter. Readers familiar with her earlier works will recognize this as an extension of her broader literary project to problematize the notion of “normal” by inverting, as it were, the relationships that construct that normalcy. Naoki has told Nana that any item made of human hair gave him the creeps. He says its sacrilegious— barbaric.

I felt that I was gradually regaining my body by writing a novel, but I still suffer from the trauma. Topics including cannibalism (Life Ceremony), conformity (Hatchling), alienation (Puzzle) and asexuality (A Clean Marriage) are familiar to readers of your novels. What compels you to return to these themes and what does writing about them allow you to do? Murata probes the question of social mores and taboos, asking whence they come and why they matter.

of Gender賞". The Japanese Association for Gender Fantasy and Science Fiction (in Japanese). August 29, 2015 . Retrieved June 21, 2018. Murata manages what her characters cannot: She transcends society’s core values, to dizzying effect . . . Her matter-of-fact rendering of wild events is as disorienting as it is intriguing.”— Atlantic Hayes, Stephanie (2020-11-09). "A Dystopian Novel That Challenges Taboos and Refuses Judgment". The Atlantic . Retrieved 2021-12-05. Published in English by Grove Atlantic in 2018 ( ISBN 9780802128256), translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. [33] The stories range between the more prosaic setting of Convenience Store Woman to the more alternative-worlds and taboo-breaching of Earthlings, and several variations on a similar theme.Until I left elementary school, it was our family’s custom for the three of us to get in the car, drive to my I did review each story and individually and came up with a ranking for each story. With each story's rating added up and average, the rating becomes a 3.85 (four stars rounded up). I have been suffering from the expectations set for Japanese women for a long time. Since childhood, I felt that neither my body nor my life belonged to me. A Summer Night's Kiss" was published in English in Astra: Ecstasy in 2022, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. [30]