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Life Ceremony
From the author of international bestseller Convenience Store Woman comes a collection of short fiction: weird, out of this world and like nothing you’ve read before.
An engaged couple falls out over the husband’s dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating. Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: ‘A Clean Marriage’, which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child.
Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.
An engaged couple falls out over the husband’s dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating. Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: ‘A Clean Marriage’, which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child.
Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.
266 pages, Paperback
First published October 30, 2019
About the author
Sayaka Murata
35 books7,279 followersSayaka Murata (in Japanese, 村田 沙耶香) is one of the most exciting up-and-coming writers in Japan today.
She herself still works part time in a convenience store, which gave her the inspiration to write Convenience Store Woman (Konbini Ningen). She debuted in 2003 with Junyu (Breastfeeding), which won the Gunzo Prize for new writers. In 2009 she won the Noma Prize for New Writers with Gin iro no uta (Silver Song), and in 2013 the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-oro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, of Body Heat, of Whitening City). Convenience Store Woman won the 2016 Akutagawa Award. Murata has two short stories published in English (both translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): "Lover on the Breeze" (Ruptured Fiction(s) of the Earthquake, Waseda Bungaku, 2011) and "A Clean Marriage" (Granta 127: Japan, 2014).
She herself still works part time in a convenience store, which gave her the inspiration to write Convenience Store Woman (Konbini Ningen). She debuted in 2003 with Junyu (Breastfeeding), which won the Gunzo Prize for new writers. In 2009 she won the Noma Prize for New Writers with Gin iro no uta (Silver Song), and in 2013 the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-oro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, of Body Heat, of Whitening City). Convenience Store Woman won the 2016 Akutagawa Award. Murata has two short stories published in English (both translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): "Lover on the Breeze" (Ruptured Fiction(s) of the Earthquake, Waseda Bungaku, 2011) and "A Clean Marriage" (Granta 127: Japan, 2014).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,896 reviews
January 7, 2023
Sayaka Murata says fuck societal norms! Start a family with your platonic best friend! Eat weeds you find in the city park! Make human stews to honour the dead! Have sex with a curtain!
Seriously though, Murata is one of my favourite authors right now. I think I'd need to reread to really understand all the things she's saying in this collection but the overall impression is just a feeling of deep discomfort about the way women are expected to live and behave in contemporary society, particularly in romantic, family, and work settings. I'd also argue that Murata's work always concerns the asexual gaze, whether that's intentional or not. My favourite stories in this were 'Two's Family' and 'Hatchling'.
Seriously though, Murata is one of my favourite authors right now. I think I'd need to reread to really understand all the things she's saying in this collection but the overall impression is just a feeling of deep discomfort about the way women are expected to live and behave in contemporary society, particularly in romantic, family, and work settings. I'd also argue that Murata's work always concerns the asexual gaze, whether that's intentional or not. My favourite stories in this were 'Two's Family' and 'Hatchling'.
May 15, 2023
‘Normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.’
What rules an action as socially acceptable, and where and why does the line for violating social decorum reside? Sayaka Murata’s work is a master class in investigating the notions of social norms and taboos, and across the twelves stories in Life Ceremony, she pivots our perspective just enough to destabilize our socially coached ideas of normalcy. ‘Instinct doesn’t exist. Morals don’t exist,’ she writes, ‘they were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming,’ and Murata’s transformations on society and morality cause us to take a deep look inward and question who’s purposes these constructs serve. Life Ceremony is beautifully translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, who has worked on Murata’s previous two novels, and reads much like a variation on the themes presented those books, particularly leaning into the unconventionality of behaviors in Earthlings. These stories can get rather unsettling and Murata certainly loves to make us squirm as she depicts taboo behavior and grotesqueries primarily related to the body and food, all while examining larger ideas of social codes and the reinforcement of them that “others” those who violate them.
‘We may be headed in a dangerous direction, but the vague conclusion seemed to be that we wouldn’t know unless we tried.’
Sayaka Murata has a knack for dark insight into everyday behavior, something she unveiled to the English speaking world with Convenience Store Woman a few years back in a crisp novel looking at ways deviants from social norms of jobs and marriage are outcasted by society. The stories collected here feel feel like the collected arguments for her primary themes in her previous novels, offering different perspectives on similar ideas to craft a well-rounded discourse on norms and taboos. Most feel akin to Earthlings, particularly due to their employment of unsettling acts of crossing the lines of supposed social decency. Though at the same time questioning us how our squeamish responses to the acts depicted are in part an expression of our commitment to enforcing cultural social codes. One story, Body Magic, reads very much like an alternative perspective on Earthlings, viewing the main character in the novel from the perspective of a school friend (the names are different but a key sexual event shared between the story and novel is discussed).
Readers of Convenience Store Woman when Murata mentions the Stone Age
‘I was simply reacting automatically in the way everyone seemed to want me to.’
The enforcement of social codes is prevalent throughout Life Ceremony, most emphasized in the story Hatchling where a young woman finds herself adopting a unique personality, mannerisms and style of fashion to fit whichever social group she is currently within, occasionally swapping several “selfs” in one day and wondering if there was a true self anywhere.
Murata invites us to consider how we adapt to external expectations about ourselves and how this plays into a larger image of society. And how those who don’t meet these expectations are seen as a threat or aberration. Even act of rebellion are shown as proceeding through the expectations, with school children merely ‘repeating other people’s lewd words’ without fully understanding what they were saying. As Convenience Store Woman frequently addressed issues of unmarried women, we also see in the story Two’s Family how a pair of women who live together and raise their children together are regarded with suspicion and asked to account for their choices. The belief that they might be a lesbian couple is seen as somehow worse than being unmarried single mothers, which really highlights how LGBTQ+ relationships are still often regarded as a violation of normalcy.
‘Everyone 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.’
The stories frequently show violations of what we consider normal in ways that force us to question the function of such moral codes. Life Ceremony, the titular story and one of the longest, contains the most pronounced discussion on the topic. Set in a vague future, the human population is on the decline and the eating of human flesh has gone from being a taboo to a common social ritual. When a person dies, their funeral—now termed a ‘life ceremony’—consists of the bereaved eating the flesh of the deceased before pairing up for sex outside. There is a brillant look at how linguistic framing, such as ‘life ceremony’ instead of ‘funeral’, and ‘insemination’ instead of ‘sex’, codify behavior into normalcy by reconfiguring the connotative assumptions. Sex is no longer a ‘dirty’ act that takes place behind closed doors but out in the open. The narrator, who remembers life before this shift in social morals and was once ridiculed for making a joke about cannibalism, feel ‘indignant that the ethic by which I’d been judged had turned out not to exist in the first place.’ It also asks us to consider how quickly beliefs and morals can shift and, if so, was there any reason to believe in them in the first place.
This sort of shift is also represented in the first story, A First-Rate Material, where human remains have been repurposed into clothing and furniture. Something once considered utterly taboo is now a status symbol, though for the narrator’s fiance he can’t accept this shift and finds it ‘barbaric,’ which is viewed as an utterly absurd belief by the narrator and her friends. But what could make him have a change of mind, which becomes central to the end of the story. These line of thought hit hard as many have witnessed major social shifts in the past few years. The social codes around navigating the pandemic, for instance, or when a country faces times of war, regime change, how scientific or technological advances change the nature of society and human interaction. Think social media and how rapidly that altered the ways we engage with news and public discourse.
‘Recently I’d been getting the feeling that humans had begun to resemble cockroaches in their habits.’
While Murata interrogates our shifting cultural norms and asks why certains aspects are taboo, it isn’t to say that normalization is always a good thing or not, but merely to show that society is fluid and that morals themselves are a construct. They reflect what a society values, as when she write ‘based on the idea of birthing life from death, this ceremony was a perfect fit for the mentality of the masses and their unconscious obsession with breeding.’ In many instances in the story, the characters begin to see humans less as a higher species but returning them in their minds with the animal kingdom.
All notions of social constructs begin to melt away under Murata’s fiery blast in these stories, and the world begins to be depicted as wild, a society of Earth rather than a collection of society upon it. ‘I had the feeling that humans were becoming more and more like animals,’ she writes. In Puzzle, the narrator begins seeing people as organs within buildings—’All the people crawling around in the world were the shared inner organs of all the gray buildings like herself’—before seeing them all as organs of a larger world, all connected and performing our own functions as part of a whole. In this, Murata’s characters find freedom.
‘It’s only when we believe in the person who makes it that we’re able to put weird stuff in our mouth.’
Food occupies a large focus in the examinations of norms and taboos in the novel, a fitting subject as food functions as a critical cultural signifier and the grotesque moments involving it are likely to induce a visceral reaction in the reader. A Magnificent Spread involves a woman making food from her homeworld (readers of Earthlings will find this familiar) and a discussion on how normalizing a meal involves the consumers to believe the story about it. Murata asks us to consider if her possibly imaginary food that would turn the average person’s stomach is any different than the husband’s expensive health shakes, something he believes in because it connotes wealth and success, or the rural families meals made from mugworms. “Normal” is all perspective here, and also shows the stories we construct around these ideas (basically, the social marketing). In Eating the City, for example, we see how eating plants found growing around the city is considered gross yet when the narrator tells her friend they were send by her grandmother who picked them on the side of a mountain, suddenly they are a folksy delicacy and imbued with an image of simple times and rugged individualism. Social norms, in this sense, are simply the marketing stories we tell.
While much of Murata’s work is dark and unsettling, there is a real heart to them that is rather uplifting beneath the surface. ‘Don’t overthink things,’ a friend says in the title story, ‘When you go to an amusement park, you don’t wonder how the roller coaster is put together or how a merry-go-round is powered, do you? Just relax and live your life.’ Naturally looking at the mechanism of life is going to make one question everything around them and see society as a comforting lie, but also that is how we get by. Which isn’t to sat don’t look, but also to say, enjoy the ride while you can. This is a fun collection, with plenty of weirdness—such as teen girls keeping a middle aged man as a pet—tons of insight, and even the occasional cute moments. Sayaka Murata turns society on its head and demands that it hand over all it’s constructs from its wallet, and between wincing and cringing, we find ourselves questioning and are better for it.
3.75/5
‘If they tried it, the memories of the wild rooted in their flesh would come back to them, and they would discover that eating the city like this would connect the earth between the gaps in the concrete and their own body.’
nimals.’
What rules an action as socially acceptable, and where and why does the line for violating social decorum reside? Sayaka Murata’s work is a master class in investigating the notions of social norms and taboos, and across the twelves stories in Life Ceremony, she pivots our perspective just enough to destabilize our socially coached ideas of normalcy. ‘Instinct doesn’t exist. Morals don’t exist,’ she writes, ‘they were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming,’ and Murata’s transformations on society and morality cause us to take a deep look inward and question who’s purposes these constructs serve. Life Ceremony is beautifully translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, who has worked on Murata’s previous two novels, and reads much like a variation on the themes presented those books, particularly leaning into the unconventionality of behaviors in Earthlings. These stories can get rather unsettling and Murata certainly loves to make us squirm as she depicts taboo behavior and grotesqueries primarily related to the body and food, all while examining larger ideas of social codes and the reinforcement of them that “others” those who violate them.
‘We may be headed in a dangerous direction, but the vague conclusion seemed to be that we wouldn’t know unless we tried.’
Sayaka Murata has a knack for dark insight into everyday behavior, something she unveiled to the English speaking world with Convenience Store Woman a few years back in a crisp novel looking at ways deviants from social norms of jobs and marriage are outcasted by society. The stories collected here feel feel like the collected arguments for her primary themes in her previous novels, offering different perspectives on similar ideas to craft a well-rounded discourse on norms and taboos. Most feel akin to Earthlings, particularly due to their employment of unsettling acts of crossing the lines of supposed social decency. Though at the same time questioning us how our squeamish responses to the acts depicted are in part an expression of our commitment to enforcing cultural social codes. One story, Body Magic, reads very much like an alternative perspective on Earthlings, viewing the main character in the novel from the perspective of a school friend (the names are different but a key sexual event shared between the story and novel is discussed).
Readers of Convenience Store Woman when Murata mentions the Stone Age
‘I was simply reacting automatically in the way everyone seemed to want me to.’
The enforcement of social codes is prevalent throughout Life Ceremony, most emphasized in the story Hatchling where a young woman finds herself adopting a unique personality, mannerisms and style of fashion to fit whichever social group she is currently within, occasionally swapping several “selfs” in one day and wondering if there was a true self anywhere.
‘I simply spoke in a way that I would be liked within whichever community I happened to be in. I responded to wherever I was in order to adapt to it.’
Murata invites us to consider how we adapt to external expectations about ourselves and how this plays into a larger image of society. And how those who don’t meet these expectations are seen as a threat or aberration. Even act of rebellion are shown as proceeding through the expectations, with school children merely ‘repeating other people’s lewd words’ without fully understanding what they were saying. As Convenience Store Woman frequently addressed issues of unmarried women, we also see in the story Two’s Family how a pair of women who live together and raise their children together are regarded with suspicion and asked to account for their choices. The belief that they might be a lesbian couple is seen as somehow worse than being unmarried single mothers, which really highlights how LGBTQ+ relationships are still often regarded as a violation of normalcy.
‘Everyone 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.’
The stories frequently show violations of what we consider normal in ways that force us to question the function of such moral codes. Life Ceremony, the titular story and one of the longest, contains the most pronounced discussion on the topic. Set in a vague future, the human population is on the decline and the eating of human flesh has gone from being a taboo to a common social ritual. When a person dies, their funeral—now termed a ‘life ceremony’—consists of the bereaved eating the flesh of the deceased before pairing up for sex outside. There is a brillant look at how linguistic framing, such as ‘life ceremony’ instead of ‘funeral’, and ‘insemination’ instead of ‘sex’, codify behavior into normalcy by reconfiguring the connotative assumptions. Sex is no longer a ‘dirty’ act that takes place behind closed doors but out in the open. The narrator, who remembers life before this shift in social morals and was once ridiculed for making a joke about cannibalism, feel ‘indignant that the ethic by which I’d been judged had turned out not to exist in the first place.’ It also asks us to consider how quickly beliefs and morals can shift and, if so, was there any reason to believe in them in the first place.
‘It’s just that thirty years ago a completely different sense of values was the norm, and I just can’t keep up with the changes. I kind of feel like I’ve been betrayed by the world.’
This sort of shift is also represented in the first story, A First-Rate Material, where human remains have been repurposed into clothing and furniture. Something once considered utterly taboo is now a status symbol, though for the narrator’s fiance he can’t accept this shift and finds it ‘barbaric,’ which is viewed as an utterly absurd belief by the narrator and her friends. But what could make him have a change of mind, which becomes central to the end of the story. These line of thought hit hard as many have witnessed major social shifts in the past few years. The social codes around navigating the pandemic, for instance, or when a country faces times of war, regime change, how scientific or technological advances change the nature of society and human interaction. Think social media and how rapidly that altered the ways we engage with news and public discourse.
‘Recently I’d been getting the feeling that humans had begun to resemble cockroaches in their habits.’
While Murata interrogates our shifting cultural norms and asks why certains aspects are taboo, it isn’t to say that normalization is always a good thing or not, but merely to show that society is fluid and that morals themselves are a construct. They reflect what a society values, as when she write ‘based on the idea of birthing life from death, this ceremony was a perfect fit for the mentality of the masses and their unconscious obsession with breeding.’ In many instances in the story, the characters begin to see humans less as a higher species but returning them in their minds with the animal kingdom.
‘I was totally absorbed in my newly discovered wild animal existence…Since the night when I’d realized that the noises humans emitted had first been animal cries and then called language, I’d been able to listen to them purely as sounds.’
All notions of social constructs begin to melt away under Murata’s fiery blast in these stories, and the world begins to be depicted as wild, a society of Earth rather than a collection of society upon it. ‘I had the feeling that humans were becoming more and more like animals,’ she writes. In Puzzle, the narrator begins seeing people as organs within buildings—’All the people crawling around in the world were the shared inner organs of all the gray buildings like herself’—before seeing them all as organs of a larger world, all connected and performing our own functions as part of a whole. In this, Murata’s characters find freedom.
‘It’s only when we believe in the person who makes it that we’re able to put weird stuff in our mouth.’
Food occupies a large focus in the examinations of norms and taboos in the novel, a fitting subject as food functions as a critical cultural signifier and the grotesque moments involving it are likely to induce a visceral reaction in the reader. A Magnificent Spread involves a woman making food from her homeworld (readers of Earthlings will find this familiar) and a discussion on how normalizing a meal involves the consumers to believe the story about it. Murata asks us to consider if her possibly imaginary food that would turn the average person’s stomach is any different than the husband’s expensive health shakes, something he believes in because it connotes wealth and success, or the rural families meals made from mugworms. “Normal” is all perspective here, and also shows the stories we construct around these ideas (basically, the social marketing). In Eating the City, for example, we see how eating plants found growing around the city is considered gross yet when the narrator tells her friend they were send by her grandmother who picked them on the side of a mountain, suddenly they are a folksy delicacy and imbued with an image of simple times and rugged individualism. Social norms, in this sense, are simply the marketing stories we tell.
While much of Murata’s work is dark and unsettling, there is a real heart to them that is rather uplifting beneath the surface. ‘Don’t overthink things,’ a friend says in the title story, ‘When you go to an amusement park, you don’t wonder how the roller coaster is put together or how a merry-go-round is powered, do you? Just relax and live your life.’ Naturally looking at the mechanism of life is going to make one question everything around them and see society as a comforting lie, but also that is how we get by. Which isn’t to sat don’t look, but also to say, enjoy the ride while you can. This is a fun collection, with plenty of weirdness—such as teen girls keeping a middle aged man as a pet—tons of insight, and even the occasional cute moments. Sayaka Murata turns society on its head and demands that it hand over all it’s constructs from its wallet, and between wincing and cringing, we find ourselves questioning and are better for it.
3.75/5
‘If they tried it, the memories of the wild rooted in their flesh would come back to them, and they would discover that eating the city like this would connect the earth between the gaps in the concrete and their own body.’
nimals.’
December 22, 2022
i love sayaka murata, that talented freak. can't wait to see how goddamn weird these are going to be 💗
little review for each story!
STORY 1: A FIRST RATE MATERIAL
this is an extremely doable level of gross so far. much closer to convenience store woman than earthlings on the sayaka murata scale.
rating: 3.5
STORY 2: A MAGNIFICENT SPREAD
kinda rudimentary to be honest. what my high school english teacher would call Hit You Over The Head Themes.
rating: 3
STORY 3: A SUMMER NIGHT'S KISS
too normal creative writing 101 of a title. what could this be.
hm. actually it was sweet and nice.
rating: 4
STORY 4: TWO'S FAMILY
same characters slightly different story so fun!
rating: 4
STORY 5: THE TIME OF THE LARGE STAR
love a star. the bigger the better, i think.
oh. it's the sun.
rating: 3.5
STORY 6: POOCHIE
gross weird gross weird gross weird.
i don't even want to keep middle aged men in my life or near me or in existence, let alone as a PET.
after 3 cute ones, too. sayaka, you keep me on my toes!
rating: 2.5
STORY 7: LIFE CEREMONY
title story!!!
this is about if people were more like cockroaches and somehow that's not even in the top 3 most disturbing things about it.
and then there's this quote which sums up all of murata's writing to me: "Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming."
totally wild.
rating: 3.75
STORY 8: BODY MAGIC
like earthlings but tolerable.
rating: 3.75
STORY 9: LOVER ON THE BREEZE
going to need a break from the sex stories soon, i'll say that.
hm.
rating: 3
STORY 10: PUZZLE
this is truly the opposite of how i see the world, to the point that i'm like. is this how one achieves transcendence?
rating: 3.75
STORY 11: EATING THE CITY
ok...this was sick as hell. in the very cool way, not the gross/disturbing/potentially cool way. city girls up 1,000.
rating: 4
STORY 12: HATCHLING
the real nightmare was the stories we unexpectedly related to along the way.
rating: 3.5
OVERALL
i'm still chasing that convenience store woman high, and some of these stories felt non-complex, but overall i think this was a compelling insight into how murata sees the world! (without any of what felt like the extraneous unnecessary grossness in earthlings.)
rating: 3.5
(thanks to netgalley / the publisher for the e-arc)
little review for each story!
STORY 1: A FIRST RATE MATERIAL
this is an extremely doable level of gross so far. much closer to convenience store woman than earthlings on the sayaka murata scale.
rating: 3.5
STORY 2: A MAGNIFICENT SPREAD
kinda rudimentary to be honest. what my high school english teacher would call Hit You Over The Head Themes.
rating: 3
STORY 3: A SUMMER NIGHT'S KISS
too normal creative writing 101 of a title. what could this be.
hm. actually it was sweet and nice.
rating: 4
STORY 4: TWO'S FAMILY
same characters slightly different story so fun!
rating: 4
STORY 5: THE TIME OF THE LARGE STAR
love a star. the bigger the better, i think.
oh. it's the sun.
rating: 3.5
STORY 6: POOCHIE
gross weird gross weird gross weird.
i don't even want to keep middle aged men in my life or near me or in existence, let alone as a PET.
after 3 cute ones, too. sayaka, you keep me on my toes!
rating: 2.5
STORY 7: LIFE CEREMONY
title story!!!
this is about if people were more like cockroaches and somehow that's not even in the top 3 most disturbing things about it.
and then there's this quote which sums up all of murata's writing to me: "Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming."
totally wild.
rating: 3.75
STORY 8: BODY MAGIC
like earthlings but tolerable.
rating: 3.75
STORY 9: LOVER ON THE BREEZE
going to need a break from the sex stories soon, i'll say that.
hm.
rating: 3
STORY 10: PUZZLE
this is truly the opposite of how i see the world, to the point that i'm like. is this how one achieves transcendence?
rating: 3.75
STORY 11: EATING THE CITY
ok...this was sick as hell. in the very cool way, not the gross/disturbing/potentially cool way. city girls up 1,000.
rating: 4
STORY 12: HATCHLING
the real nightmare was the stories we unexpectedly related to along the way.
rating: 3.5
OVERALL
i'm still chasing that convenience store woman high, and some of these stories felt non-complex, but overall i think this was a compelling insight into how murata sees the world! (without any of what felt like the extraneous unnecessary grossness in earthlings.)
rating: 3.5
(thanks to netgalley / the publisher for the e-arc)
October 9, 2024
There are more than ten short stories in this book.
📔📕📖📗📘📙📚📓📒✒
I like the story of the "Life Ceremony" very much. Special culture and meal?
It's a very creative story.
Sayaka Murata’s style. Love it.
📔📕📖📗📘📙📚📓📒✒
I like the story of the "Life Ceremony" very much. Special culture and meal?
It's a very creative story.
Sayaka Murata’s style. Love it.
July 20, 2022
Overall rating : 3.37⭐
“Life Ceremony ” by Sayaka Murata (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) is a collection of twelve wildly imaginative, bizarre and unique short stories.
The first story ,“A First-Rate Material”, (4/5 for the unique concept but this one did make me a bit queasy) is set in a future where premium clothing, home décor and furniture are made from human remains (skin, bone, nails, etc) and a soon to be married couple disagree over their preferences/abhorrence for the same. “A Magnificent Spread”(4/5) revolves around two sisters, one of who is soon to be engaged and how their beliefs and their food preferences can either be a unifying factor and promote tolerance or tear them apart. “A Summer Night's Kiss” (2/5) is more a vignette than a story that depicts an interaction between two very different women who have been lifelong friends – one promiscuous, the other reserved who is enticed by her more promiscuous friend into trying fruit the texture of which is similar to a boy’s tongue. In “Two's Family”(4/5), we meet two women – friends who have raised their respective children together in an unconventional family setup. “The Time of a Large Star”(4/5) revolves around a little girl who moves to a country where nobody sleeps. “Poochie” (3/5) tells the story of two schoolgirls who adopt and care for an unlikely pet. The titular story “Life Ceremony”(3.5/5) revolves around a custom of feasting on the human remains of the recently deceased – an effort to fortify the friends and family partaking in the ceremony with the necessary life essence to procreate in a world where the human population is dwindling. “Body Magic” (3/5) revolves around sexual curiosity and awareness among teenagers.“Lover on the Breeze”(3/5) traces the attachment that forms between a young girl and the curtains that adorn her bedroom window over the years. “Puzzle” (2/5 but another one that I did find more than a little gross) a woman’s discomfort with her own body manifests in a weird obsession with other people’s bodies and their bodily fluids. In “Eating the City “(4/5) a young woman tries to recreate her experiences of eating fresh vegetables in the countryside during her childhood by experimenting with wild vegetation, dandelions and weeds that she scavenges from the city she now lives in. The final story “Hatchling”(4/5) revolves around the concept of belongingness and blending in. A woman who adopts different personas in order to blend in with her different “communities” in her personal and professional life finds it hard to understand her true self in the wake of her wedding.
Most of the stories revolve around female characters and touch upon themes of family, identity, relationships, individuality and belongingness. The stories vary in tone and setting – from darkly funny and futuristic, bold and feminist to dystopian yet awkwardly sentimental. I had thoroughly enjoyed Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata in the past and therefore was eager to read this collection. Though some stories are a bit disturbing the collection is addictive and engaging and Murata pushes her imagination (and the readers') to extreme limits- blurring the distinction between normal and abnormal.
“I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal."
(from the titular stories Life Ceremony)
While I admire the writing and the creativity of the author and I did like the intention and messages the author sought to convey, I was not blown away by this collection as many other readers have been.
“Life Ceremony ” by Sayaka Murata (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori) is a collection of twelve wildly imaginative, bizarre and unique short stories.
The first story ,“A First-Rate Material”, (4/5 for the unique concept but this one did make me a bit queasy) is set in a future where premium clothing, home décor and furniture are made from human remains (skin, bone, nails, etc) and a soon to be married couple disagree over their preferences/abhorrence for the same. “A Magnificent Spread”(4/5) revolves around two sisters, one of who is soon to be engaged and how their beliefs and their food preferences can either be a unifying factor and promote tolerance or tear them apart. “A Summer Night's Kiss” (2/5) is more a vignette than a story that depicts an interaction between two very different women who have been lifelong friends – one promiscuous, the other reserved who is enticed by her more promiscuous friend into trying fruit the texture of which is similar to a boy’s tongue. In “Two's Family”(4/5), we meet two women – friends who have raised their respective children together in an unconventional family setup. “The Time of a Large Star”(4/5) revolves around a little girl who moves to a country where nobody sleeps. “Poochie” (3/5) tells the story of two schoolgirls who adopt and care for an unlikely pet. The titular story “Life Ceremony”(3.5/5) revolves around a custom of feasting on the human remains of the recently deceased – an effort to fortify the friends and family partaking in the ceremony with the necessary life essence to procreate in a world where the human population is dwindling. “Body Magic” (3/5) revolves around sexual curiosity and awareness among teenagers.“Lover on the Breeze”(3/5) traces the attachment that forms between a young girl and the curtains that adorn her bedroom window over the years. “Puzzle” (2/5 but another one that I did find more than a little gross) a woman’s discomfort with her own body manifests in a weird obsession with other people’s bodies and their bodily fluids. In “Eating the City “(4/5) a young woman tries to recreate her experiences of eating fresh vegetables in the countryside during her childhood by experimenting with wild vegetation, dandelions and weeds that she scavenges from the city she now lives in. The final story “Hatchling”(4/5) revolves around the concept of belongingness and blending in. A woman who adopts different personas in order to blend in with her different “communities” in her personal and professional life finds it hard to understand her true self in the wake of her wedding.
Most of the stories revolve around female characters and touch upon themes of family, identity, relationships, individuality and belongingness. The stories vary in tone and setting – from darkly funny and futuristic, bold and feminist to dystopian yet awkwardly sentimental. I had thoroughly enjoyed Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata in the past and therefore was eager to read this collection. Though some stories are a bit disturbing the collection is addictive and engaging and Murata pushes her imagination (and the readers') to extreme limits- blurring the distinction between normal and abnormal.
“I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal."
(from the titular stories Life Ceremony)
While I admire the writing and the creativity of the author and I did like the intention and messages the author sought to convey, I was not blown away by this collection as many other readers have been.
January 18, 2022
Stories on society, and how little tweaks and changes mean all the difference to conformity and what's conceived as normal
Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming
This bundle of short stories is closer to Earthlings than to Convenience Store Woman. Sayaka Murata explores society and conformity in creative ways. In general I found the characterisation of the persons starring in the story a bit light, but the ideas are definitely very interesting, and often disturbing. Below I give a brief summary of the constituent parts of Life Ceremony: Stories:
A first-rate material
Human hair sweater and other human material objects are status and fashion symbols in this story. An argument is that it is much more natural to wear for us than produce of other animals is used. The dynamic is fascinating and the conclusion less clear cut (or gruesome) then one might expect, this is no Tender Is the Flesh.
A magnificent spread
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.
A summer’s night kiss
The experience of a 75 year old mother of two, who is still a virgin and conceived via artificial insemination. This one is three pages and despite its short length also deals with societal alienation and food.
Two’s family
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.
The time of a large star
Very brief, about a girl moving to a country with no sleep and people living at night. Like a sketch of story that should have been developed further.
Poochie
A hilarious story of two school girls feeding an unusual pet ().
Life ceremony
This titular story again takes the concept of using dead human material, but now in cannibalism instead of for fancy furniture. With some added insemination, so that death births life.
The clunky worldbuilding feels a bit similar to The Last Children of Tokyo.
Still this one had the most quotes I wrote down:
What about the real world? Where the hell is that, then?
It’s the mirage that’s real. All our little lies are gathered together and become a reality that you can only see now.
I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.
Body magic
The premise of this story is quite similar to Earthlings, with cousins only meeting each other once a year during Obon and having sex. High school girls trying to remain true to themselves under all of the talk of schoolmates about sex. The resolution was a bit lacking.
Lover on the breeze
A story told from the perspective of the curtains of a girl, who develops a romance for a boy.
Puzzle
An unusual woman who feels she is a concrete building is desperately searching for real human fluids.
She sees offices as encasing organs e.g. her coworkers, leading to quite a bizarre vista of the world.
Quite interestingly done, you wouldn't imagine you'd want to read it, but the author effectively sucks you into this story.
Eating the city
A Tokyo office worker returns her thoughts to the mountains she used to see her grandmother in. Due to homesickness she starts foraging the city for fresh plants and initiates a campaign to make her coworker enthusiastic as well. Fun to read since I once did a tour like this in my hometown and it’s amazing what grows around you in the urban environment. There are some overtures of just eating dandelions familiar to readers of Earthlings, and wanting to be more close to trees and the soil that are slightly disturbing.
Hatchling
His hand was giving shape to my outline as he stroked me.
A girl has five persona’s to respond to the various communities she is part of. Despite some people seeing her as two-faced, in general she is well liked by all due to her adaptability, and this raises the question of who is the real I.
This becomes quite a conundrum when her marriage and the unification of all her social circles is coming near.
Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming
This bundle of short stories is closer to Earthlings than to Convenience Store Woman. Sayaka Murata explores society and conformity in creative ways. In general I found the characterisation of the persons starring in the story a bit light, but the ideas are definitely very interesting, and often disturbing. Below I give a brief summary of the constituent parts of Life Ceremony: Stories:
A first-rate material
Human hair sweater and other human material objects are status and fashion symbols in this story. An argument is that it is much more natural to wear for us than produce of other animals is used. The dynamic is fascinating and the conclusion less clear cut (or gruesome) then one might expect, this is no Tender Is the Flesh.
A magnificent spread
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.
A summer’s night kiss
The experience of a 75 year old mother of two, who is still a virgin and conceived via artificial insemination. This one is three pages and despite its short length also deals with societal alienation and food.
Two’s family
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.
The time of a large star
Very brief, about a girl moving to a country with no sleep and people living at night. Like a sketch of story that should have been developed further.
Poochie
A hilarious story of two school girls feeding an unusual pet ().
Life ceremony
This titular story again takes the concept of using dead human material, but now in cannibalism instead of for fancy furniture. With some added insemination, so that death births life.
The clunky worldbuilding feels a bit similar to The Last Children of Tokyo.
Still this one had the most quotes I wrote down:
What about the real world? Where the hell is that, then?
It’s the mirage that’s real. All our little lies are gathered together and become a reality that you can only see now.
I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.
Body magic
The premise of this story is quite similar to Earthlings, with cousins only meeting each other once a year during Obon and having sex. High school girls trying to remain true to themselves under all of the talk of schoolmates about sex. The resolution was a bit lacking.
Lover on the breeze
A story told from the perspective of the curtains of a girl, who develops a romance for a boy.
Puzzle
An unusual woman who feels she is a concrete building is desperately searching for real human fluids.
She sees offices as encasing organs e.g. her coworkers, leading to quite a bizarre vista of the world.
Quite interestingly done, you wouldn't imagine you'd want to read it, but the author effectively sucks you into this story.
Eating the city
A Tokyo office worker returns her thoughts to the mountains she used to see her grandmother in. Due to homesickness she starts foraging the city for fresh plants and initiates a campaign to make her coworker enthusiastic as well. Fun to read since I once did a tour like this in my hometown and it’s amazing what grows around you in the urban environment. There are some overtures of just eating dandelions familiar to readers of Earthlings, and wanting to be more close to trees and the soil that are slightly disturbing.
Hatchling
His hand was giving shape to my outline as he stroked me.
A girl has five persona’s to respond to the various communities she is part of. Despite some people seeing her as two-faced, in general she is well liked by all due to her adaptability, and this raises the question of who is the real I.
This becomes quite a conundrum when her marriage and the unification of all her social circles is coming near.
July 15, 2022
Sayaka Murata has quickly risen to the top of my favourite authors list. Each of her books has been excellent, thoughtful, and frightening. Her narrations stayed with me long after I finished the book.
Her writing style is challenging and subversive. This collection delves into her obsession with the human body and its connections to our minds, society, and culture.
Each of her stories either explored the idea that something strange becomes normalised in society or that the protagonist is abnormal in comparison to normal society. In any case, the stories were bizarre and twisted.
🦴☠️ A first rate material :- 4 stars
- Sayaka Murata, You never cease to astound me. This is the true definition of her ability and thought process. If I ever want to write something, it will be something like this.
🥣 A magnificent spread :- 3.5 stars
- Deliciously captivating
🌌 A summer night's kiss :- 3.5 stars
- What a sweet little story; I didn't expect anything like this from her.
👩❤️👩 Two's family :- 4 stars
- The same characters as the previous one, but a much needed story following the previous one. Beautiful relationship and newly discovered family.
✡️ The time of the large star :- 3.5 stars
- not her making my wildest fantasy a reality. It's sad to see the world through the eyes of a child, but I want to live in a world like that.
🧔Poochie :- 2 Stars
- A very strange cute little story follows three cute little stories.
🥩🥣Life ceremony :- 4.5 stars
- Fuck the core values of society. It is now time for Sayaka Murata to triumph. I am only a soul living in her world.
👄Body magic :- 4 stars
- reminded me of Earthlings equally weird and beautiful odd
🎐Lover of the breeze :- 3.5 stars
- Who would have guessed, taking a childish fantasy to a whole new level. Her characters are either female or non - living things objects. That is exactly what we require.
🧩Puzzle :- 4 stars
- Her imagination expands with each story, and she's only growing and there's no turning back. Genius.
🌍Eating the earth :- 4 stars stars
- Not your typical city girl's life. Very cool and fascinating.
🎭 Hatchling :- 4.5 stars
- I'm disturbed because of how much I can relate to it and how much I enjoyed it. Weird and unsettling for sure.
With the exception of a few stories, this was a very strong collection that I thoroughly enjoyed. This story collection is more of Earthlings than convience store woman. So, if you liked Earthlings, you will enjoy this. However, if you're reading this after reading Convenience Store Woman, you should think about it. It is not a story collection for everyone.
Her writing style is challenging and subversive. This collection delves into her obsession with the human body and its connections to our minds, society, and culture.
Each of her stories either explored the idea that something strange becomes normalised in society or that the protagonist is abnormal in comparison to normal society. In any case, the stories were bizarre and twisted.
🦴☠️ A first rate material :- 4 stars
- Sayaka Murata, You never cease to astound me. This is the true definition of her ability and thought process. If I ever want to write something, it will be something like this.
🥣 A magnificent spread :- 3.5 stars
- Deliciously captivating
🌌 A summer night's kiss :- 3.5 stars
- What a sweet little story; I didn't expect anything like this from her.
👩❤️👩 Two's family :- 4 stars
- The same characters as the previous one, but a much needed story following the previous one. Beautiful relationship and newly discovered family.
✡️ The time of the large star :- 3.5 stars
- not her making my wildest fantasy a reality. It's sad to see the world through the eyes of a child, but I want to live in a world like that.
🧔Poochie :- 2 Stars
- A very strange cute little story follows three cute little stories.
🥩🥣Life ceremony :- 4.5 stars
- Fuck the core values of society. It is now time for Sayaka Murata to triumph. I am only a soul living in her world.
👄Body magic :- 4 stars
- reminded me of Earthlings equally weird and beautiful odd
🎐Lover of the breeze :- 3.5 stars
- Who would have guessed, taking a childish fantasy to a whole new level. Her characters are either female or non - living things objects. That is exactly what we require.
🧩Puzzle :- 4 stars
- Her imagination expands with each story, and she's only growing and there's no turning back. Genius.
🌍Eating the earth :- 4 stars stars
- Not your typical city girl's life. Very cool and fascinating.
🎭 Hatchling :- 4.5 stars
- I'm disturbed because of how much I can relate to it and how much I enjoyed it. Weird and unsettling for sure.
With the exception of a few stories, this was a very strong collection that I thoroughly enjoyed. This story collection is more of Earthlings than convience store woman. So, if you liked Earthlings, you will enjoy this. However, if you're reading this after reading Convenience Store Woman, you should think about it. It is not a story collection for everyone.
December 29, 2021
Sayaka Murata is a nonconformist Japanese writer who explores alternatives against traditional society norms.
She exams deviations from expectations and normalcy.
Questioning my own repulsions and uncomfortableness a few times was my job—
I cringed a few times — but I absolutely love the way Sayaka looks at life — at people - at animals - insects - nature - foods ——reality—humanity.
This is the third book I’ve read by Sayaka.
To me, her work speaks with an understanding of the unconscionable—as if she was born with exceptional deep observation skills.
The themes in these knock-out-quirky-short stories…..[12 total]….are centered around women, men, friendships, marriages, families, tumultuous relationships, gender roles, parenting, sex, cannibalism, food, nature, society…..and other disorientating taboos.
The title of the twelve stories are:
A First-Rate Material
A Magnificent Spread
A Summer Night’s Kiss
Two’s Family
The Time of the Large Star
Poochie
Life Ceremony
Body Magic
Lover on the Breeze
Puzzle
Eating the City
Hatchling
These stories could be read in one or two sittings….but I purposely took my time - usually reading 1 story a day. Never more than two. Delectable—savory and unsavory humanitarian oddities to reflect.
“Eating the City” was one of my favorite stories….
….splendid childhood memories…..
This excerpt is deliciously heartwarming—
Awwww…
….the innocence of being a kid🪁🍉🐜
“It would be the same for anyone, their sense of smell responding to the summer scent that linked back to memories of vacations, bringing up vivid, nostalgic, scenes”.
“Until I left elementary school, it was our family’s custom for the three of us to get in the car, drive to my
father’s childhood home in the countryside, and stay there for a week over the Obon festival. It was a typical country house, deep in the mountains of Nagano. We would drive up a narrow mountain road to reach the house, which had an entrance hall about the same side as a child’s bedroom and an atmosphere completely different from our house in Saitama. I was so fascinated by the Old house as soon as we arrived, I would immediately start running around and exploring, but with all the rooms connected by sliding paper doors, I would soon get lost and then burst in on the room where adults were relaxing. They would scold me, but as soon as they let me go, I would be off again, running around the sliding doors open. Once I finished exploring inside, I played outside to my heart’s content until it was time for dinner. Then I was so hungry, so I would keep peeking in on the kitchen, where my mother and grandmother we’re cooking. I was a picky eater, but to my parents’ delight, I ate twice as much as usual when we were in the mountains. The vegetables Granny brought in from her vegetable garden were much sweeter than those we ate at home. Wondering why that was, I’d open my mouth wide and bite into vegetables that I never normally ate”.
“Sometimes we think nostalgically, for no reason at all”.
In “A Summer Night’s Kiss”…we meet Yoskiko…..
“Yoshiko had just turned seventy-five. She had never had sex and had never kissed anyone either. She had never even once had intercourse with her older husband, who died five years earlier. Both of their daughters had been conceived by artificial semination, and she was still a virgin when she became a mother”.
Kikue (around the same age) — has never married, has no kids, but ‘has’ been kissed.
The friendship between these two polar opposites of the septuagenarians [becoming my favorite word—given I’ll be 70 years old in five months]…..is quite endearing.
The opening story….”A First-Rate Material CRACKED ME UP…(expect a mild squeamish bodily response)
It’s the type of story — that if you think about it too literally…your blood pressure might spike along with an increased heart rate.
Here’s a small sample of why…..
Naoki was Nana’s fiancé.
Nana had a sweater made out of 100% human hair.
“Just the thing for winter! Warm, durable, and luxurious”.
Naoki has told Nana that any item made of human hair gave him the creeps. He says its sacrilegious— barbaric.
He told Nana that if she used any items hacked from dead bodies— fingernails, teeth, bone, skin, skulls, or any other grotesque revolting dead human product, he would break off their engagement.
THE STORY WAS HILARIOUS- THOUGHT-PROVOKING - with a wonderful powerful luv-bug message!
So….12 stories in all ….offbeat-outlandish!!
A note to the author….To Sayaka Murata…..
I’ll read every book you write. I hope all your books are translated in English. I think you are positively great!!!
Thanks (always) to Grove Atlantic …..and Netgalley.
She exams deviations from expectations and normalcy.
Questioning my own repulsions and uncomfortableness a few times was my job—
I cringed a few times — but I absolutely love the way Sayaka looks at life — at people - at animals - insects - nature - foods ——reality—humanity.
This is the third book I’ve read by Sayaka.
To me, her work speaks with an understanding of the unconscionable—as if she was born with exceptional deep observation skills.
The themes in these knock-out-quirky-short stories…..[12 total]….are centered around women, men, friendships, marriages, families, tumultuous relationships, gender roles, parenting, sex, cannibalism, food, nature, society…..and other disorientating taboos.
The title of the twelve stories are:
A First-Rate Material
A Magnificent Spread
A Summer Night’s Kiss
Two’s Family
The Time of the Large Star
Poochie
Life Ceremony
Body Magic
Lover on the Breeze
Puzzle
Eating the City
Hatchling
These stories could be read in one or two sittings….but I purposely took my time - usually reading 1 story a day. Never more than two. Delectable—savory and unsavory humanitarian oddities to reflect.
“Eating the City” was one of my favorite stories….
….splendid childhood memories…..
This excerpt is deliciously heartwarming—
Awwww…
….the innocence of being a kid🪁🍉🐜
“It would be the same for anyone, their sense of smell responding to the summer scent that linked back to memories of vacations, bringing up vivid, nostalgic, scenes”.
“Until I left elementary school, it was our family’s custom for the three of us to get in the car, drive to my
father’s childhood home in the countryside, and stay there for a week over the Obon festival. It was a typical country house, deep in the mountains of Nagano. We would drive up a narrow mountain road to reach the house, which had an entrance hall about the same side as a child’s bedroom and an atmosphere completely different from our house in Saitama. I was so fascinated by the Old house as soon as we arrived, I would immediately start running around and exploring, but with all the rooms connected by sliding paper doors, I would soon get lost and then burst in on the room where adults were relaxing. They would scold me, but as soon as they let me go, I would be off again, running around the sliding doors open. Once I finished exploring inside, I played outside to my heart’s content until it was time for dinner. Then I was so hungry, so I would keep peeking in on the kitchen, where my mother and grandmother we’re cooking. I was a picky eater, but to my parents’ delight, I ate twice as much as usual when we were in the mountains. The vegetables Granny brought in from her vegetable garden were much sweeter than those we ate at home. Wondering why that was, I’d open my mouth wide and bite into vegetables that I never normally ate”.
“Sometimes we think nostalgically, for no reason at all”.
In “A Summer Night’s Kiss”…we meet Yoskiko…..
“Yoshiko had just turned seventy-five. She had never had sex and had never kissed anyone either. She had never even once had intercourse with her older husband, who died five years earlier. Both of their daughters had been conceived by artificial semination, and she was still a virgin when she became a mother”.
Kikue (around the same age) — has never married, has no kids, but ‘has’ been kissed.
The friendship between these two polar opposites of the septuagenarians [becoming my favorite word—given I’ll be 70 years old in five months]…..is quite endearing.
The opening story….”A First-Rate Material CRACKED ME UP…(expect a mild squeamish bodily response)
It’s the type of story — that if you think about it too literally…your blood pressure might spike along with an increased heart rate.
Here’s a small sample of why…..
Naoki was Nana’s fiancé.
Nana had a sweater made out of 100% human hair.
“Just the thing for winter! Warm, durable, and luxurious”.
Naoki has told Nana that any item made of human hair gave him the creeps. He says its sacrilegious— barbaric.
He told Nana that if she used any items hacked from dead bodies— fingernails, teeth, bone, skin, skulls, or any other grotesque revolting dead human product, he would break off their engagement.
THE STORY WAS HILARIOUS- THOUGHT-PROVOKING - with a wonderful powerful luv-bug message!
So….12 stories in all ….offbeat-outlandish!!
A note to the author….To Sayaka Murata…..
I’ll read every book you write. I hope all your books are translated in English. I think you are positively great!!!
Thanks (always) to Grove Atlantic …..and Netgalley.
December 26, 2021
"I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn't it? I think it's just that the only madness society allows is called normal" - this quote from the title-giving story is more or less Sayaka Murata's poetological standpoint in a nutshell. The author does not only question society's taboos, customs and standards, but when she offers different viewpoints, she proceeds to challenge them as well, thus refraining from offering simple solutions, or rather; any solutions at all. The problem at hand is that the world is absurd, and there's no remedy, a fact that is horrifying, sad, but also quite funny, all at once. The unsettling ambiguity Sayaka Murata evokes is what makes her novels Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings so strong, and the same goes for this short story collection.
This is the first collection of Murata's short stories translated into English, featuring twelve texts set in the present, future, and in alternate worlds, focusing on topics like:
- using human remains like skin and bones as material to craft furniture, jewellery, etc.;
- food as an example for cultural acceptance and the concept of normalcy;
- a 75-year-old virgin with two kids being friends with a senior nymphomaniac;
- a city in which no one sleeps;
- a man with burn-out being kept as a pet by schoolgirls;
- ritualistic cannibalism;
- a side story to Earthlings;
- a curtain as a narrator;
- a woman who identifies way too strongly with concrete buildings;
- a woman who tries to transform the city around her with, let's say: herbal remedies;
- aaaaand: a woman who has no personality.
Per usual in short story collections, some texts are stronger than others, but this one truly displays some gems like the title-giving "Life Ceremony" (cannibalism! sex! morality!), and the ones discussing the relativity of what counts as repulsive ("A Magnificient Spread") or, ähem, respectful, maybe ("A First-Rate Material" about, you know, making curtains out of human skin etc.). And how can you not love a story written from the perspective of a curtain?! Plus: Even the really, really short fragments absolutely deserve to be in there. I found the last three entries to be a little weaker, but hey, overall, this is great stuff.
Sayaka Murata is a prolific writer, which means: There are many more texts to be translated. I can't wait to read them.
This is the first collection of Murata's short stories translated into English, featuring twelve texts set in the present, future, and in alternate worlds, focusing on topics like:
- using human remains like skin and bones as material to craft furniture, jewellery, etc.;
- food as an example for cultural acceptance and the concept of normalcy;
- a 75-year-old virgin with two kids being friends with a senior nymphomaniac;
- a city in which no one sleeps;
- a man with burn-out being kept as a pet by schoolgirls;
- ritualistic cannibalism;
- a side story to Earthlings;
- a curtain as a narrator;
- a woman who identifies way too strongly with concrete buildings;
- a woman who tries to transform the city around her with, let's say: herbal remedies;
- aaaaand: a woman who has no personality.
Per usual in short story collections, some texts are stronger than others, but this one truly displays some gems like the title-giving "Life Ceremony" (cannibalism! sex! morality!), and the ones discussing the relativity of what counts as repulsive ("A Magnificient Spread") or, ähem, respectful, maybe ("A First-Rate Material" about, you know, making curtains out of human skin etc.). And how can you not love a story written from the perspective of a curtain?! Plus: Even the really, really short fragments absolutely deserve to be in there. I found the last three entries to be a little weaker, but hey, overall, this is great stuff.
Sayaka Murata is a prolific writer, which means: There are many more texts to be translated. I can't wait to read them.
August 19, 2022
something about this collection just drives me up the fucking wall whenever i think of this i think i understand what people feel when they snort cocaine these words are traveling through my veins this book is me
December 24, 2021
In Sayaka Murata’s short story collection, first published in 2019, she returns to familiar territory, exploring alienation, bodily boundaries, and the potential of small acts of subversion, with a focus on exposing and questioning social conventions and cultural norms. Her pieces range from enigmatic, miniature fairy tales to unsettling commentaries on contemporary consumer culture and women’s increasingly fragmented identities. She plays with points of view in Lover on the Breeze a love story narrated by a bedroom curtain, while Two’s Company’s a brief, but striking interrogation of traditional family structures expressed through the eccentric choices of two elderly women. Her work sometimes displays the influences of earlier writers also associated with intense, transgressive fiction, like Taeko Kono, while Body Magic echoes aspects of Amy Yamada’s preoccupations. Other pieces highlight Murata’s fascination with the magical or the speculative, such as the stand-out title piece Life Ceremony a macabre, disquieting portrait of a future where climate change, or some other disaster, has led to a shrinking population and the formation of a society in which cannibalism and ritual procreation are now defining practices. Although Murata’s stories aren’t always entirely effective, I found the majority thought-provoking and surprisingly absorbing, sometimes unnerving, sometimes drily funny. Murata’s talked about her habit of developing her ideas through drawings and character outlines, and these do have a slightly visual quality. They’re simply told, with a minimum of brush strokes, yet somehow result in immersive, rich, imagined worlds. The collection’s fluidly translated by Murata’s long-time collaborator Ginny Tapley Takemori.
Thanks to Edelweiss Plus and publisher Grove Press, imprint of Grove Atlantic, for an arc
Thanks to Edelweiss Plus and publisher Grove Press, imprint of Grove Atlantic, for an arc
May 25, 2022
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This collection was both disappointing and unnecessarily disgusting. Not a great start to my reading year…
A lot of things...
As Life Ceremony happened to be one of my most anticipated 2022 releases, I was very happy to learn that my request for an arc was approved by its publisher. Sadly, it turns out that Life Ceremony was not the offbeat collection I was expecting it’d be. If you enjoyed Murata’s Convenience Store Woman but found Earthlings too grotesque, well, my advice is that you steer clear from her short stories. I loved the former and found the latter to be, if not enjoyable, certainly a striking read. Life Ceremony, on the other hand, feels like a rather forgettable collection of stories designed to disgust & shock its readers. Even the scenarios they explore are certainly weird, their weirdness was almost too predictable and samey. While the disturbing elements that made Earthlings into such a memorable read felt ‘earned’, and did not take precedence over the story’s characters & themes, here those elements feel obvious and as if they were the whole point of the story. As with her two novels, Murata’s short stories explore alienation, loneliness, humanity, and contemporary Japanese society. But, to be perfectly honest, Murata’s insights into these topics here feel banal and entirely derivative of her full length works.
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:
Which, ugh, let me gouge my eyes out. I didn’t find this funny or shocking, just low-key gross. Gross is actually the perfect word to describe this collection. Alongside garish, vulgar, perverse, trite, and gratuitous. At times I felt that I was reading the writing of a teenager trying to be edgy and writing about edgy things like shit, sex, blood, and cannibalism. There were also lines such as "I felt so happy at the thought that I was among his innards" that just...why?! Then an orgasm is described as "it's kind of like your body becomes innocent, like a child"...which. Yeah. Something about that does not sit right with me.
Contrary to what one might believe reading this review, I don’t mind gore, body horror, or works that are fascinated with what is abject. I recently watched and was blown away by Titane which definitely delivers on the body horror and the body is abject front. But this collection prioritizes these aspects in an ineffective way. They were far from subversive, and in fact, I found it predictable how almost every story features a society where something we consider taboo has been normalized.
While I was deeply dissatisfied by this collection, and I will certainly be avoiding her short-form work from now on, I do consider Murata to be a remarkable storyteller (even if this collection was, in my opinion of course, a dud). If you are interested in reading this and you are not put-off my intentionally & ott gross content, well, go for it.
This collection was both disappointing and unnecessarily disgusting. Not a great start to my reading year…
“What could be more normal than making people into clothes or furniture after they die?”
A lot of things...
As Life Ceremony happened to be one of my most anticipated 2022 releases, I was very happy to learn that my request for an arc was approved by its publisher. Sadly, it turns out that Life Ceremony was not the offbeat collection I was expecting it’d be. If you enjoyed Murata’s Convenience Store Woman but found Earthlings too grotesque, well, my advice is that you steer clear from her short stories. I loved the former and found the latter to be, if not enjoyable, certainly a striking read. Life Ceremony, on the other hand, feels like a rather forgettable collection of stories designed to disgust & shock its readers. Even the scenarios they explore are certainly weird, their weirdness was almost too predictable and samey. While the disturbing elements that made Earthlings into such a memorable read felt ‘earned’, and did not take precedence over the story’s characters & themes, here those elements feel obvious and as if they were the whole point of the story. As with her two novels, Murata’s short stories explore alienation, loneliness, humanity, and contemporary Japanese society. But, to be perfectly honest, Murata’s insights into these topics here feel banal and entirely derivative of her full length works.
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:
“Sanae quietly gripped the plastic bag in her hand, thinking of all the excrement filling Emiko's body.”
Which, ugh, let me gouge my eyes out. I didn’t find this funny or shocking, just low-key gross. Gross is actually the perfect word to describe this collection. Alongside garish, vulgar, perverse, trite, and gratuitous. At times I felt that I was reading the writing of a teenager trying to be edgy and writing about edgy things like shit, sex, blood, and cannibalism. There were also lines such as "I felt so happy at the thought that I was among his innards" that just...why?! Then an orgasm is described as "it's kind of like your body becomes innocent, like a child"...which. Yeah. Something about that does not sit right with me.
Contrary to what one might believe reading this review, I don’t mind gore, body horror, or works that are fascinated with what is abject. I recently watched and was blown away by Titane which definitely delivers on the body horror and the body is abject front. But this collection prioritizes these aspects in an ineffective way. They were far from subversive, and in fact, I found it predictable how almost every story features a society where something we consider taboo has been normalized.
While I was deeply dissatisfied by this collection, and I will certainly be avoiding her short-form work from now on, I do consider Murata to be a remarkable storyteller (even if this collection was, in my opinion of course, a dud). If you are interested in reading this and you are not put-off my intentionally & ott gross content, well, go for it.
May 10, 2023
i love how sayaka murata writes books for the disturbed...... the strange..... the weirdos only...... yeah she gets me........
____
mini-reviews for each short story:
1) A First-Rate Material ★★★
ok yeah i see what's happening!!! enjoyed this one, although it felt a little incomplete (but it's a short story so i think i'll just have to get used to that). will never look at wedding veils the same way again. cheers!
2) A Magnificent Spread ★★★
i liked this just about as much as the first one, which is to say that i did not love it but did not dislike it either. food is one of my least favorite subjects to read about but this was kind of fun, actually!
3) A Summer Night’s Kiss ★★★½
this was super short, but it had all of my favorite sayaka murata things in it……. societal commentary..….. asexual representation…… convenience stores……. my favorite so far!!
4) Two's Family ★★★½
so sweet,, my insides are melting. i love the focus on older women and their slightly unconventional ways of living. society needs more of this! (its me, i'm society)
5) The Time of the Large Star ★★½
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)_/¯
6) Poochie ★★★
another intriguing concept that feels more like a sketch than an actual thought-out idea, but i still had fun reading it. i love when murata goes WEIRD weird.
7) Life Ceremony ★★★½
finally something longer! makes it easier to really dig your teeth into (get it?) (because this short story is about cannibalism)
8) Body Magic ★★★
not sure why this and earhtlings had so many similarities but other than that i liked the overall message a lot!
9) Lover on the Breeze ★★★
interesting. i stared at my curtains for like five minutes after reading this. very enjoyable experience! (by that i mean reading the short story, not starting at my curtains. that was uneventful)
10) Puzzle ★★★½
jesus fuck!! that's what i'm talking about!!! this is one of my favorites so far, absolutely love the way sayaka murata depicts alienation in her works.
11) Eating the City ★★★½
this really worked for me, for whatever reason. maybe because i read this in public? and it's always a very weird sensation to look up and watch the world around you through murata's view, if just for a few moments. yeah.
12) Hatchling ★★★½
oh god. i felt that.
13) A Clean Marriage ★★★
the last line in this short story collection is....... something else. i liked this one, but i felt a little confused by the end (??????? someone dm me and tell me wtf happened). other than that, pretty good conclusion!
overall ★★★½
i really enjoyed this collection! i am not a short collection girlie, but i am very much a sayaka murata girlie, so this worked for me about as well as a short story collection could go for me. i still prefer murata's other works over this one, though!
____
mini-reviews for each short story:
1) A First-Rate Material ★★★
ok yeah i see what's happening!!! enjoyed this one, although it felt a little incomplete (but it's a short story so i think i'll just have to get used to that). will never look at wedding veils the same way again. cheers!
2) A Magnificent Spread ★★★
i liked this just about as much as the first one, which is to say that i did not love it but did not dislike it either. food is one of my least favorite subjects to read about but this was kind of fun, actually!
3) A Summer Night’s Kiss ★★★½
this was super short, but it had all of my favorite sayaka murata things in it……. societal commentary..….. asexual representation…… convenience stores……. my favorite so far!!
4) Two's Family ★★★½
so sweet,, my insides are melting. i love the focus on older women and their slightly unconventional ways of living. society needs more of this! (its me, i'm society)
5) The Time of the Large Star ★★½
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)_/¯
6) Poochie ★★★
another intriguing concept that feels more like a sketch than an actual thought-out idea, but i still had fun reading it. i love when murata goes WEIRD weird.
7) Life Ceremony ★★★½
finally something longer! makes it easier to really dig your teeth into (get it?) (because this short story is about cannibalism)
8) Body Magic ★★★
not sure why this and earhtlings had so many similarities but other than that i liked the overall message a lot!
9) Lover on the Breeze ★★★
interesting. i stared at my curtains for like five minutes after reading this. very enjoyable experience! (by that i mean reading the short story, not starting at my curtains. that was uneventful)
10) Puzzle ★★★½
jesus fuck!! that's what i'm talking about!!! this is one of my favorites so far, absolutely love the way sayaka murata depicts alienation in her works.
11) Eating the City ★★★½
this really worked for me, for whatever reason. maybe because i read this in public? and it's always a very weird sensation to look up and watch the world around you through murata's view, if just for a few moments. yeah.
12) Hatchling ★★★½
oh god. i felt that.
13) A Clean Marriage ★★★
the last line in this short story collection is....... something else. i liked this one, but i felt a little confused by the end (??????? someone dm me and tell me wtf happened). other than that, pretty good conclusion!
overall ★★★½
i really enjoyed this collection! i am not a short collection girlie, but i am very much a sayaka murata girlie, so this worked for me about as well as a short story collection could go for me. i still prefer murata's other works over this one, though!
November 1, 2024
Published in English as Life Ceremony.
Being alive is a glorious feeling meant to be celebrated in earnest, yet polite society has all these rules and regulations that dictate the appropriate (i.e. the normal) way to go about said celebration.
Enter Sayaka Murata and her 12 short stories, that give the metaphorical finger to all things normal and acceptable, in exchange for living life to its fullest, regardless of how silly, weird, uncomfortable and even creepy it may look.
As with any short story collection, I've liked some, adored others, and blinked incomprehensibly at a few. To be fair, I found each and every story rather intriguing, and any low rating was mostly due to lack of a sufficiently fleshed out message. As far as atmosphere went though, all of them deserve top notch accolades.
As a general rule, the more unusual and creepier the premise, the more interested it made me. And I say that while looking at my baffled reading notes for A First Rate Material, downright nauseating at times. But I cannot deny the mastery of the writing style, which compelled me to keep on reading and to question my own moral conventions.
All stories aim to challenge some aspect of normality, so it would be impossible for me to recommend a wholly "innocent" one for the more... conventional reader. Even so, I would definitely recommend this book to all proponents of the woke movement, especially those keen to point out cultural appropriation wherever they go. And to anyone who enjoys getting their world view challenged of course, even if in a rather queasy and nauseating manner.
Some of the more conventionally umm... intriguing stories worth mentioning were:
- A Magnificent Spread - for protectors of cultural appropriation
- Body Magic - for every little girl who's ever been prude- or slut-shamed
My personal favourites were:
- A First Rate Material - recycling as a large-scale trendy endeavour
- Life Ceremony - funerals as celebrations of life and the living?
- Hatchling - how to fit in anytime, anywhere and with anyone
Score: 3.8/5 stars
======================
ARC kindly provided by Aufbau Verlag via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Book #16 of my "read at least 20 books in German" challenge.
Being alive is a glorious feeling meant to be celebrated in earnest, yet polite society has all these rules and regulations that dictate the appropriate (i.e. the normal) way to go about said celebration.
Enter Sayaka Murata and her 12 short stories, that give the metaphorical finger to all things normal and acceptable, in exchange for living life to its fullest, regardless of how silly, weird, uncomfortable and even creepy it may look.
As with any short story collection, I've liked some, adored others, and blinked incomprehensibly at a few. To be fair, I found each and every story rather intriguing, and any low rating was mostly due to lack of a sufficiently fleshed out message. As far as atmosphere went though, all of them deserve top notch accolades.
As a general rule, the more unusual and creepier the premise, the more interested it made me. And I say that while looking at my baffled reading notes for A First Rate Material, downright nauseating at times. But I cannot deny the mastery of the writing style, which compelled me to keep on reading and to question my own moral conventions.
All stories aim to challenge some aspect of normality, so it would be impossible for me to recommend a wholly "innocent" one for the more... conventional reader. Even so, I would definitely recommend this book to all proponents of the woke movement, especially those keen to point out cultural appropriation wherever they go. And to anyone who enjoys getting their world view challenged of course, even if in a rather queasy and nauseating manner.
Some of the more conventionally umm... intriguing stories worth mentioning were:
- A Magnificent Spread - for protectors of cultural appropriation
- Body Magic - for every little girl who's ever been prude- or slut-shamed
My personal favourites were:
- A First Rate Material - recycling as a large-scale trendy endeavour
- Life Ceremony - funerals as celebrations of life and the living?
- Hatchling - how to fit in anytime, anywhere and with anyone
Score: 3.8/5 stars
"Normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal."
======================
ARC kindly provided by Aufbau Verlag via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Book #16 of my "read at least 20 books in German" challenge.
April 28, 2022
Such a great collection of short stories! I can’t really explain them as the best part of reading it was going in with no expectations and then having literal jaw dropping reactions as the unusual part of the story was revealed. Some of the stories seem to be set now, but in a slightly altered world with different customs, some seem to be set in the near future, others with an altered reality but all made me think about societal customs and expectations and how I’d react to the different situations. My favourites were “A First-Rate Material” ; “A Magnificent Spread” about different food customs; “Life Ceremony”. I doubt I will forget this one! “Poochie” an unusual pet ; “Lovers on the Breeze” about a curtain named Puff!
An original and entertaining read.
An original and entertaining read.
June 15, 2024
4 stars
short review for busy readers: A shocking, impressive collection of short stories that is far more gripping in concept than in actual storytelling. The reader is forced to confront societal biases and moral values in extreme fashions, making this collection perfect for a horror or philosophical book club. Much closer to Earthlings than Convenience Store Woman. IMHO, the title story “Life Ceremony” is a masterpiece!
in detail:
Contents:
First Rate Material
A Magnificent Spread
A Summer Night’s Kiss
Two’s Family
The Time of the Large Star
Poochie
Life Ceremony
Body Magic (same characters as in "Earthling")
Lover on the Breeze
Puzzle
Eating the City
Hatchling
My only real niggle with this collection is that, unfortunately, the translation errs on the side of being faithful to the original Japanese wording instead of rendering it into normal English. This leads to very stilted, awkward dialogue and descriptions that sometimes don’t make much logical sense to non-Japanese readers.
Below are a few of the ones I enjoyed the most:
Poochie is about a little girl who keeps a ‘pet’ called Poochie in a shed. One day, she invites her school friend to come and meet her pet. Turns out, dear Poochie is a middle aged salaryman who went a bit gaga one day and wander out of central Tokyo into the surrounding hills. He’s been her happy pet ever since…
Lover on the Breeze is a love triangle between a girl, her boyfriend and the girl’s sentient window curtain. The girl loves the curtain. The curtain likes the girl, but desires the boyfriend.. The boyfriend is clueless. The most original love triangle I've ever read!
First Rate Material is set in a future Japan where human bodies are ‘recycled’ after death and made into household furnishings and clothing. Sofas and chairs, bowls, bags, sweaters. Much in the same way we use animals’ bodies today. Most people in this future time believe this to be a very good thing, because that way they can continue to be useful and pretty long after their demise.
As mentioned above, the story Life Ceremony is, IMHO, a modern masterpiece. It makes us question our view of funerals and how we express grief. To say too much would ruin it, but major trigger warnings! You will deffo feel queasy after reading it, but you'll never look at funerals the same way again.
short review for busy readers: A shocking, impressive collection of short stories that is far more gripping in concept than in actual storytelling. The reader is forced to confront societal biases and moral values in extreme fashions, making this collection perfect for a horror or philosophical book club. Much closer to Earthlings than Convenience Store Woman. IMHO, the title story “Life Ceremony” is a masterpiece!
in detail:
Contents:
First Rate Material
A Magnificent Spread
A Summer Night’s Kiss
Two’s Family
The Time of the Large Star
Poochie
Life Ceremony
Body Magic (same characters as in "Earthling")
Lover on the Breeze
Puzzle
Eating the City
Hatchling
My only real niggle with this collection is that, unfortunately, the translation errs on the side of being faithful to the original Japanese wording instead of rendering it into normal English. This leads to very stilted, awkward dialogue and descriptions that sometimes don’t make much logical sense to non-Japanese readers.
Below are a few of the ones I enjoyed the most:
Poochie is about a little girl who keeps a ‘pet’ called Poochie in a shed. One day, she invites her school friend to come and meet her pet. Turns out, dear Poochie is a middle aged salaryman who went a bit gaga one day and wander out of central Tokyo into the surrounding hills. He’s been her happy pet ever since…
Lover on the Breeze is a love triangle between a girl, her boyfriend and the girl’s sentient window curtain. The girl loves the curtain. The curtain likes the girl, but desires the boyfriend.. The boyfriend is clueless. The most original love triangle I've ever read!
First Rate Material is set in a future Japan where human bodies are ‘recycled’ after death and made into household furnishings and clothing. Sofas and chairs, bowls, bags, sweaters. Much in the same way we use animals’ bodies today. Most people in this future time believe this to be a very good thing, because that way they can continue to be useful and pretty long after their demise.
As mentioned above, the story Life Ceremony is, IMHO, a modern masterpiece. It makes us question our view of funerals and how we express grief. To say too much would ruin it, but major trigger warnings! You will deffo feel queasy after reading it, but you'll never look at funerals the same way again.
January 16, 2022
Life Ceremonies (2022) is a collection of 12 short-stories from Ginny Tapley Takemori, translated from the Japanese originals (2019) by Sayaka Murata. The same translator-author were responsible for the brilliant Convenience Store Woman and the, to me less successful Earthlings.
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.
The title story "Life Ceremonies" is set in a near-future world where, post demographic decline, funerals are replaced by life ceremonies. Those gathered first feast on the deceased and then seek an ‘insemination partner’ amongst the other guests, the ceremony followed by a reproductive pairing-off, something our narrator, who remembers the old taboos of our world, finds difficult to accept.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I heard that Mr. Nakao from General Affairs passed away.”
We all looked at her.“What? Really?”
“Seems it was a stroke.”
I pictured Mr. Nakao’s good-natured smile. He was an elegant man with silver-gray hair and often shared sweets he received from clients with us. He’d retired just a few years ago.
“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.”
“Really? I’d better hold back on lunch today, then. Maybe I’ll skip dessert.”
We all put our custard desserts back, unopened, into the bag from the convenience store.
“I bet Mr. Nakao tastes good,” said a woman a year older than me as she ate her pork and potato stew.“
Similarly, “A First-Rate Material” is set in a future where human bodies are recycled so that e.g. a ring made of human teeth bones is more prized than one of platinum. Here however the narrator regards it as normal, whereas her fiancée is the one who refuses to buy her a bone engagement ring, and prefers cashmere to human-hair jumpers, which he forbids her to wear.
Others are set in our present-day world but focused on characters who have a very different view on city-life which they take to an Earthlings-like obsession.
Puzzle starts with the narrator realises how much she enjoys the physical closeness of other city dwellers, feeling her own body lacks the sensations she feels from others, before she starts to transform her view seeing herself, as well as buildings, as part of the city’s body and other people as organs within this organism.
Sanae crinkled her eyes in a smile. “I’m fine!” As the train moved off, the passengers all raised their faces slightly, as if seeking oxygen. Surrounded by lips facing upward, Sanae relaxed her body and leaned into the eddy of body heat. Submerged in air full of sighs released from numerous mouths, she closed her eyes and savored the dampness on her skin, floating in it, happy being smothered in the carbon dioxide spewed out by passengers. Long ago the term forest bathing had been popular, but Sanae preferred “people bathing” like this. Even more people got on at the next stop, and enthralled by the mounting warm pressure, she opened her eyes a little and noticed the salaryman next to her cluck his tongue. She stared almost enviously at the black hole in his face, fancying that she could see through the thin, cracked lips to the red-black tongue bouncing against the inside of his mouth.
….
“Oh look, Sanae’s smiling again! No way it’s that DVD. It’s got to be a new boyfriend!”
“Right? Come on, Sanae, you’ve got to tell us!”
The membrane-covered fleshes all leaned toward her. Sanae laughed out loud in spite of herself. This triggered the internal organs, which also started to give off sounds, their flesh trembling.
"Eat the City" has a character originally from the countryside who starts to try and forage wild plants from the concrete of the city, a pastime that turns into an obsessive mission:
With my hand still thrust into the soil there next to the artwork, I savored the sensation of the earth that had raised my food for me. Nutrition nurtured by the earth flowed into my palm. I pushed my hand even deeper into the soil, and it overflowed the gaps in my fingers, staining my sallow hand brown. My hand looked like a tree. Normally I was different from plants, separated from the earth, but I was growing out of the earth too. Evidence of this was the fact that the plants I had picked in this city were spreading to all corners of my body. I squeezed together the fingers growing in the soil. My fingers and the soil mixed together, melded, and stared up at the plants growing out of them.
The closing story “Hatchling” is perhaps closest to Convenience Store Woman territory, and my favourite of the collection. The narrator is someone who so much fits in with those around her, and, in particular their very first impression of her, that she has 5 completely different personalities for different friendship groups, and no real true-character, something that she realises could be an issue when she starts preparing her wedding invites:
Whenever I met up with childhood friends, I was still Prez, and with high school friends I was Peabrain, and I was still Princess to college club friends, while emails from my coworkers at the part-time job I did while in college were addressed to Haruo. Now I’d become Mysterious Takahashi. My life continued with these five characters progressing alongside one another.
The one who liked sparkling wine was Peabrain. Haruo preferred beer, and Princess often drank sangria. Prez was usually organizing the parties, so she drank only oolong tea or, at most, one glass of lemon sour. Mysterious Takahashi drank shochu or whiskey on the rocks.
A Magnificent Spread is another strong story – an engagement feast for a woman’s sister and her fiancees’s parents reveals some strongly different tastes in food, ranging from insects from a rural tradition, through junk-food, and space-style meal-in-a-tablet, to the narrator’s sister’s own odd preference for recipes from the magical city of Dundilas where she believes she lived in a past life. This has some interesting things to say on cultural differences and whether they are best accepted by each embracing other’s culture into a whole, or allowing each person to remain separate within their own preference.
3.5 stars – some of the stories definitely approach strong 4 star territory but I found the collection a little uneven (with some of the stories I haven’t mentioned above rather weaker), perhaps because of my preference for a certain style of Murata’s work over another.
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.
The title story "Life Ceremonies" is set in a near-future world where, post demographic decline, funerals are replaced by life ceremonies. Those gathered first feast on the deceased and then seek an ‘insemination partner’ amongst the other guests, the ceremony followed by a reproductive pairing-off, something our narrator, who remembers the old taboos of our world, finds difficult to accept.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I heard that Mr. Nakao from General Affairs passed away.”
We all looked at her.“What? Really?”
“Seems it was a stroke.”
I pictured Mr. Nakao’s good-natured smile. He was an elegant man with silver-gray hair and often shared sweets he received from clients with us. He’d retired just a few years ago.
“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.”
“Really? I’d better hold back on lunch today, then. Maybe I’ll skip dessert.”
We all put our custard desserts back, unopened, into the bag from the convenience store.
“I bet Mr. Nakao tastes good,” said a woman a year older than me as she ate her pork and potato stew.“
Similarly, “A First-Rate Material” is set in a future where human bodies are recycled so that e.g. a ring made of human teeth bones is more prized than one of platinum. Here however the narrator regards it as normal, whereas her fiancée is the one who refuses to buy her a bone engagement ring, and prefers cashmere to human-hair jumpers, which he forbids her to wear.
Others are set in our present-day world but focused on characters who have a very different view on city-life which they take to an Earthlings-like obsession.
Puzzle starts with the narrator realises how much she enjoys the physical closeness of other city dwellers, feeling her own body lacks the sensations she feels from others, before she starts to transform her view seeing herself, as well as buildings, as part of the city’s body and other people as organs within this organism.
Sanae crinkled her eyes in a smile. “I’m fine!” As the train moved off, the passengers all raised their faces slightly, as if seeking oxygen. Surrounded by lips facing upward, Sanae relaxed her body and leaned into the eddy of body heat. Submerged in air full of sighs released from numerous mouths, she closed her eyes and savored the dampness on her skin, floating in it, happy being smothered in the carbon dioxide spewed out by passengers. Long ago the term forest bathing had been popular, but Sanae preferred “people bathing” like this. Even more people got on at the next stop, and enthralled by the mounting warm pressure, she opened her eyes a little and noticed the salaryman next to her cluck his tongue. She stared almost enviously at the black hole in his face, fancying that she could see through the thin, cracked lips to the red-black tongue bouncing against the inside of his mouth.
….
“Oh look, Sanae’s smiling again! No way it’s that DVD. It’s got to be a new boyfriend!”
“Right? Come on, Sanae, you’ve got to tell us!”
The membrane-covered fleshes all leaned toward her. Sanae laughed out loud in spite of herself. This triggered the internal organs, which also started to give off sounds, their flesh trembling.
"Eat the City" has a character originally from the countryside who starts to try and forage wild plants from the concrete of the city, a pastime that turns into an obsessive mission:
With my hand still thrust into the soil there next to the artwork, I savored the sensation of the earth that had raised my food for me. Nutrition nurtured by the earth flowed into my palm. I pushed my hand even deeper into the soil, and it overflowed the gaps in my fingers, staining my sallow hand brown. My hand looked like a tree. Normally I was different from plants, separated from the earth, but I was growing out of the earth too. Evidence of this was the fact that the plants I had picked in this city were spreading to all corners of my body. I squeezed together the fingers growing in the soil. My fingers and the soil mixed together, melded, and stared up at the plants growing out of them.
The closing story “Hatchling” is perhaps closest to Convenience Store Woman territory, and my favourite of the collection. The narrator is someone who so much fits in with those around her, and, in particular their very first impression of her, that she has 5 completely different personalities for different friendship groups, and no real true-character, something that she realises could be an issue when she starts preparing her wedding invites:
Whenever I met up with childhood friends, I was still Prez, and with high school friends I was Peabrain, and I was still Princess to college club friends, while emails from my coworkers at the part-time job I did while in college were addressed to Haruo. Now I’d become Mysterious Takahashi. My life continued with these five characters progressing alongside one another.
The one who liked sparkling wine was Peabrain. Haruo preferred beer, and Princess often drank sangria. Prez was usually organizing the parties, so she drank only oolong tea or, at most, one glass of lemon sour. Mysterious Takahashi drank shochu or whiskey on the rocks.
A Magnificent Spread is another strong story – an engagement feast for a woman’s sister and her fiancees’s parents reveals some strongly different tastes in food, ranging from insects from a rural tradition, through junk-food, and space-style meal-in-a-tablet, to the narrator’s sister’s own odd preference for recipes from the magical city of Dundilas where she believes she lived in a past life. This has some interesting things to say on cultural differences and whether they are best accepted by each embracing other’s culture into a whole, or allowing each person to remain separate within their own preference.
3.5 stars – some of the stories definitely approach strong 4 star territory but I found the collection a little uneven (with some of the stories I haven’t mentioned above rather weaker), perhaps because of my preference for a certain style of Murata’s work over another.
July 12, 2022
Thank you to the Grove Atlantic and the Grove Press for sending me an early copy of this book in exchange for a review.
Please note that all of my words are completely my own words and may not be used or quoted by anyone without direct permission from me.
I will be reviewing each story individually and giving you a brief synopsis of the story. Then I shall give a star rating to each story. In the end, I will give a full review of what I thought of the book as well as average all of my star ratings to create my final rating. The rating may change depending on if I agree with the star rating or not. Please note that the individual review may have minor spoilers however the overall review will not. You may scroll down to find the full review at the bottom.
A First-Rate Material
This story follows a couple as they have opposing beliefs on something about this world. In this world, using human body parts such as hair has been considered normal and is extremely common. So much so that every deceased person gets turned into some sort of product, whether it is clothing, furniture, or even a chandelier.
One of the characters frequently shops for furniture and items that are made of humans. Their fiancee disagrees with this belief. The story follows their relationship as they both have different beliefs on this one particular subject.
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?
all in all: I liked it. starting off strong. 4.5 stars
A Magnificent Spread
This story takes place all at one dinner party. The story touches on how each culture has a different way of eating food and making food and why it should be accepted and not judged that one culture prepares food and eats differently than others.
I thought this story was quite bland. I think that Murata could have definitely taken this one step forward and even intensify in ways. I think different styles of foods through culture and the way that different cultures make food are so commonly criticized and I think that this could have definitely talked about it a bit more.
I wouldn't even mind if the story was a bit longer but it had a lot more potential it just wasn't used to its best.
all in all: not bad. could have been better. 3 stars
A Summer Night's Kiss
This was a very short one. Slightly felt unnecessary but I can't really talk bad about it because there wasn't much to critique. It's about two polar opposites (something I have found very common in the preceding two stories). One is a very closed off, non-sensual person. While the other is an extremely romantic, salacious person. It takes place all in one conversation in a convenience store.
Other than that...nothing happened
all in all: I don't know? 3.75 stars?
Two's Family
This one is another short one, following the same two characters. This story is much later in their life. It's a reflection on their early memories of their friendship and how they came to be where they are.
I liked this one more than the last one only because it had more weight and importance on it. It was cute seeing their friendship and what their life was like. Again, not too much happened here but I liked it.
all in all: nice story. that's all. 4 stars
The Time of the Large Star
This story felt very dreamlike. Quite literally felt like something I would think of in a fever dream. It's about a sprouting friendship of two young kids who live in a town that doesn't sleep. The sand in the town makes everyone not need to sleep. However, during the nighttime everyone goes out and in the daytime, everyone stays inside. Except for these two kids who like to go outside during the daytime since it's so empty and bright.
I really enjoyed this. I definitely would like it to be a longer story because I think the friendship could have really been explored more and I would even read a full novel of this. It reads a lot like middle grade but it has a lot of room to roam and explore a lot of subjects.
all in all: i liked it. 4.5 stars
Poochie
Another cute story about a found dog. That's literally it. The only other thing is a friendship between two girls. That's the only other thing that could be explored more...but that's really it.
all in all: I can't really say much about this? 3 stars
Life Ceremony
This is the title of the book's story! Don't get too excited with that exclamation point. I was visibly repulsed by this book. Quite literally on the verge of barfing the entire time. I don't even want to give the plot because I want you all to read this yourself.
This story is filled with social commentary. I'm actually really happy that I read this because it truly was a good story despite its...grossness. I actually loved this story. At its core, this story is about the strange processes of evolution and how society changes over time and becomes more accepting of new traditions and things happening in the world.
Even if we don't agree with it now thirty years from now we may accept it. And that's why I loved this story so much because even though it's completely different from our lives, it still deeply relates to the way evolution works and the process of time changing how we think of things. I will say I do understand why the cover is the way that it is.
all in all: loved. want more of this even though it was gross. 5 stars
Body Magic
Sayaka Murata has the amazing talent of making me visibly repulsed. I don't know how she does it. But she does. I don't think many people were as grossed out as I was, but this was kinda gross.
The story follows teenagers at school discovering their sexualities ... in extremely sexual ways. Some of the descriptions in this book just made me completely grossed out. I didn't know I was reading a romance novel but it felt like I was. As someone who is not a very sexual person, this story did not hit that level for me. Not that it was bad per se...just not for me.
all in all: uh. i don't know what to say. 3.25 stars
Lover on the Breeze
This one was alright. Nothing to special. Also about a teenager finding their sexuality. That's really all there is to it. I can't say anything about it but can't say anything good about it.
all in all: what I just said. 2.5 stars
Puzzle
I am so confused. This was so gross and so confusing and so weird and so strange and so good but weird and confusing and I just have no words.
the only way I can explain this is using these words: organs, puke, organs, huh?
this story practically guaranteed a reread for this book because I don't think I understood everything that happened but I still loved it?
all in all: what did I just read? 4 stars
Eating the City
this was a really strange story. not strange as in bad. just strange. it’s about a character who has different habits of eating than others do. that’s all i really can say without spoiling it. i don’t fully know what happened but i liked it.
all in all: good. 3.75 stars
Hatchling
I deeply loved this story. Everything about it had the full potential of being a full novel. it gave exposition. it gave rising action. climax. falling action w. resolution. it had depth to it. a full constructed story. the character felt so well-formed and thought out. murata truly had a story for this character and developed it masterfully.
the story is about a person who changes their personality in the environment they are in and the people they are with. like...quite literally changes their personality. as soon as they are with a different group their entire persona changes. so much so that the character doesn't even know what their real personality looks like or feels like.
this story felt like a full novel put in very short words and I think it's my favourite of this book. it had absolutely everything and did not waste time on details that were unnecessary. it was amazing and strange and slightly relatable while at the same time deeply concerning.
all in all: an amazing way to close out a short story collection. started with a banger. ended with a banger. 5 stars
OVERALL REVIEW
Well. This was a rollercoaster.
I really enjoyed this. In ways, I didn't think I would. Each story had a message behind it. Something that Murata was trying to tell the audience. Whether it was some moral lesson that is hidden in the story allegorically or sweet capturings of a friendship, they all had some sort of meaning behind it (as a story should; at times however I find that some short stories in collections don't have much meaning but all of these did).
Murata captures quite ordinary moments and turns them into unsettling, confusing, and strange moments. However, confusing in a way that you just can't imagine anyone thinking of these.
I love absurdism. And this quite literally took the cake for the token absurdist short story collection. Murata is highly known for being able to take small details and turn them into something amazing and absurd and crazy and wild.
Something I think she does extremely well with these absurd moments as well is that she makes them so absurd and make them feel so normal and whatever world we live in. I think that's a talent that many few authors and writers have. To create something that is completely out of this world and mind-boggling and turn it into something that feels like habit and turn it into normality is just exquisite. The only other writers I think have been able to do this successfully in contemporary literature may be Donna Tartt and Ottessa Moshfegh. And those are some big and talented names to be compared to. And this amazing talent puts Murata as an auto-read, auto-buy author.
While I do think the book definitely had stories that could have been tweaked or even expanded, for the most part, it had nothing but vibes and good writing in it. I don't want to give all the credit to Murata though, because I believe translations tend to not get the spotlight they most definitely deserve. I want to thank Ginny Tapley Takemori for capturing what I think Murata had in mind perfectly. Every single word was amazingly placed in its rightful spot. Each word was perfectly picked, whether the objective was to make me squirm, smile, or want to close my eyes—it was done perfectly.
Again I think my only problem with this book was that some parts of it could have definitley been expanded. I understand that its often hard for publishers to produce bigger books because of pricing, however I would have loved to see stories like "The Time of the Large Star" or "Two's Family" be longer and more developed stories. It felt like it was a first draft or something when it could have been really good stories.
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).
all in all: really strong short story collection. crazy, wild, confusing, strange, all of the above. strong contendors but also ones that could have had more.
Please note that all of my words are completely my own words and may not be used or quoted by anyone without direct permission from me.
I will be reviewing each story individually and giving you a brief synopsis of the story. Then I shall give a star rating to each story. In the end, I will give a full review of what I thought of the book as well as average all of my star ratings to create my final rating. The rating may change depending on if I agree with the star rating or not. Please note that the individual review may have minor spoilers however the overall review will not. You may scroll down to find the full review at the bottom.
A First-Rate Material
This story follows a couple as they have opposing beliefs on something about this world. In this world, using human body parts such as hair has been considered normal and is extremely common. So much so that every deceased person gets turned into some sort of product, whether it is clothing, furniture, or even a chandelier.
One of the characters frequently shops for furniture and items that are made of humans. Their fiancee disagrees with this belief. The story follows their relationship as they both have different beliefs on this one particular subject.
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?
all in all: I liked it. starting off strong. 4.5 stars
A Magnificent Spread
This story takes place all at one dinner party. The story touches on how each culture has a different way of eating food and making food and why it should be accepted and not judged that one culture prepares food and eats differently than others.
I thought this story was quite bland. I think that Murata could have definitely taken this one step forward and even intensify in ways. I think different styles of foods through culture and the way that different cultures make food are so commonly criticized and I think that this could have definitely talked about it a bit more.
I wouldn't even mind if the story was a bit longer but it had a lot more potential it just wasn't used to its best.
all in all: not bad. could have been better. 3 stars
A Summer Night's Kiss
This was a very short one. Slightly felt unnecessary but I can't really talk bad about it because there wasn't much to critique. It's about two polar opposites (something I have found very common in the preceding two stories). One is a very closed off, non-sensual person. While the other is an extremely romantic, salacious person. It takes place all in one conversation in a convenience store.
Other than that...nothing happened
all in all: I don't know? 3.75 stars?
Two's Family
This one is another short one, following the same two characters. This story is much later in their life. It's a reflection on their early memories of their friendship and how they came to be where they are.
I liked this one more than the last one only because it had more weight and importance on it. It was cute seeing their friendship and what their life was like. Again, not too much happened here but I liked it.
all in all: nice story. that's all. 4 stars
The Time of the Large Star
This story felt very dreamlike. Quite literally felt like something I would think of in a fever dream. It's about a sprouting friendship of two young kids who live in a town that doesn't sleep. The sand in the town makes everyone not need to sleep. However, during the nighttime everyone goes out and in the daytime, everyone stays inside. Except for these two kids who like to go outside during the daytime since it's so empty and bright.
I really enjoyed this. I definitely would like it to be a longer story because I think the friendship could have really been explored more and I would even read a full novel of this. It reads a lot like middle grade but it has a lot of room to roam and explore a lot of subjects.
all in all: i liked it. 4.5 stars
Poochie
Another cute story about a found dog. That's literally it. The only other thing is a friendship between two girls. That's the only other thing that could be explored more...but that's really it.
all in all: I can't really say much about this? 3 stars
Life Ceremony
This is the title of the book's story! Don't get too excited with that exclamation point. I was visibly repulsed by this book. Quite literally on the verge of barfing the entire time. I don't even want to give the plot because I want you all to read this yourself.
This story is filled with social commentary. I'm actually really happy that I read this because it truly was a good story despite its...grossness. I actually loved this story. At its core, this story is about the strange processes of evolution and how society changes over time and becomes more accepting of new traditions and things happening in the world.
Even if we don't agree with it now thirty years from now we may accept it. And that's why I loved this story so much because even though it's completely different from our lives, it still deeply relates to the way evolution works and the process of time changing how we think of things. I will say I do understand why the cover is the way that it is.
all in all: loved. want more of this even though it was gross. 5 stars
Body Magic
Sayaka Murata has the amazing talent of making me visibly repulsed. I don't know how she does it. But she does. I don't think many people were as grossed out as I was, but this was kinda gross.
The story follows teenagers at school discovering their sexualities ... in extremely sexual ways. Some of the descriptions in this book just made me completely grossed out. I didn't know I was reading a romance novel but it felt like I was. As someone who is not a very sexual person, this story did not hit that level for me. Not that it was bad per se...just not for me.
all in all: uh. i don't know what to say. 3.25 stars
Lover on the Breeze
This one was alright. Nothing to special. Also about a teenager finding their sexuality. That's really all there is to it. I can't say anything about it but can't say anything good about it.
all in all: what I just said. 2.5 stars
Puzzle
I am so confused. This was so gross and so confusing and so weird and so strange and so good but weird and confusing and I just have no words.
the only way I can explain this is using these words: organs, puke, organs, huh?
this story practically guaranteed a reread for this book because I don't think I understood everything that happened but I still loved it?
all in all: what did I just read? 4 stars
Eating the City
this was a really strange story. not strange as in bad. just strange. it’s about a character who has different habits of eating than others do. that’s all i really can say without spoiling it. i don’t fully know what happened but i liked it.
all in all: good. 3.75 stars
Hatchling
I deeply loved this story. Everything about it had the full potential of being a full novel. it gave exposition. it gave rising action. climax. falling action w. resolution. it had depth to it. a full constructed story. the character felt so well-formed and thought out. murata truly had a story for this character and developed it masterfully.
the story is about a person who changes their personality in the environment they are in and the people they are with. like...quite literally changes their personality. as soon as they are with a different group their entire persona changes. so much so that the character doesn't even know what their real personality looks like or feels like.
this story felt like a full novel put in very short words and I think it's my favourite of this book. it had absolutely everything and did not waste time on details that were unnecessary. it was amazing and strange and slightly relatable while at the same time deeply concerning.
all in all: an amazing way to close out a short story collection. started with a banger. ended with a banger. 5 stars
OVERALL REVIEW
Well. This was a rollercoaster.
I really enjoyed this. In ways, I didn't think I would. Each story had a message behind it. Something that Murata was trying to tell the audience. Whether it was some moral lesson that is hidden in the story allegorically or sweet capturings of a friendship, they all had some sort of meaning behind it (as a story should; at times however I find that some short stories in collections don't have much meaning but all of these did).
Murata captures quite ordinary moments and turns them into unsettling, confusing, and strange moments. However, confusing in a way that you just can't imagine anyone thinking of these.
I love absurdism. And this quite literally took the cake for the token absurdist short story collection. Murata is highly known for being able to take small details and turn them into something amazing and absurd and crazy and wild.
Something I think she does extremely well with these absurd moments as well is that she makes them so absurd and make them feel so normal and whatever world we live in. I think that's a talent that many few authors and writers have. To create something that is completely out of this world and mind-boggling and turn it into something that feels like habit and turn it into normality is just exquisite. The only other writers I think have been able to do this successfully in contemporary literature may be Donna Tartt and Ottessa Moshfegh. And those are some big and talented names to be compared to. And this amazing talent puts Murata as an auto-read, auto-buy author.
While I do think the book definitely had stories that could have been tweaked or even expanded, for the most part, it had nothing but vibes and good writing in it. I don't want to give all the credit to Murata though, because I believe translations tend to not get the spotlight they most definitely deserve. I want to thank Ginny Tapley Takemori for capturing what I think Murata had in mind perfectly. Every single word was amazingly placed in its rightful spot. Each word was perfectly picked, whether the objective was to make me squirm, smile, or want to close my eyes—it was done perfectly.
Again I think my only problem with this book was that some parts of it could have definitley been expanded. I understand that its often hard for publishers to produce bigger books because of pricing, however I would have loved to see stories like "The Time of the Large Star" or "Two's Family" be longer and more developed stories. It felt like it was a first draft or something when it could have been really good stories.
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).
all in all: really strong short story collection. crazy, wild, confusing, strange, all of the above. strong contendors but also ones that could have had more.
November 12, 2022
4,5*
Oi, kaip man patinka Sayaka Murata. Ne tai KAIP ji rašo, bet KĄ ji nori pasakyti. Kai kas patinka mažiau, kai kas – daugiau, bet man visada smalsu ką ji galvoja. Jaučiu didelę simpatiją jos filosofijai. Tiesiog gera jaustis nevienišai.
Šis 12-kos apsakymų rinkinys daug artimesnis josios kraupokam romanui "Earthlings" nei "Kombinio moteris".
Ką galvojate apie žmogaus kūno dalių panaudojimą po mirties? Ne organų persodinimui recipientams, bet odos, plaukų, kaulų panaudojimo rūbams, baldams. Autorė deda lygybės ženklą tarp žmogaus ir gyvūno. (A First-Rate Material)
O apie apie mirusiojo pagerbimą jį suvalgant per laidotuves? (Life Ceremony)
Šie, gal labiausiai galintys šokiruoti skaitytojus, apsakymai man labiausiai ir patiko.
Nesinori komentuoti kitų jos apsakymų, nes galiu pagadinti jums skaitymo įdomumą. Tik paminėsiu – rašo ji apie kitokį maistą (nebūtinai kanibalizmą), kitokius šeimos modelius (nebūtinai LGBTQ)…
Beje, autorė šį mėnesį atvyksta į Vilnių. Kaip skelbia Vilniaus lapai, Lapkričio 19 d. bus susitikimas su skaitytojais.
Oi, kaip man patinka Sayaka Murata. Ne tai KAIP ji rašo, bet KĄ ji nori pasakyti. Kai kas patinka mažiau, kai kas – daugiau, bet man visada smalsu ką ji galvoja. Jaučiu didelę simpatiją jos filosofijai. Tiesiog gera jaustis nevienišai.
Šis 12-kos apsakymų rinkinys daug artimesnis josios kraupokam romanui "Earthlings" nei "Kombinio moteris".
Ką galvojate apie žmogaus kūno dalių panaudojimą po mirties? Ne organų persodinimui recipientams, bet odos, plaukų, kaulų panaudojimo rūbams, baldams. Autorė deda lygybės ženklą tarp žmogaus ir gyvūno. (A First-Rate Material)
O apie apie mirusiojo pagerbimą jį suvalgant per laidotuves? (Life Ceremony)
Šie, gal labiausiai galintys šokiruoti skaitytojus, apsakymai man labiausiai ir patiko.
Nesinori komentuoti kitų jos apsakymų, nes galiu pagadinti jums skaitymo įdomumą. Tik paminėsiu – rašo ji apie kitokį maistą (nebūtinai kanibalizmą), kitokius šeimos modelius (nebūtinai LGBTQ)…
Beje, autorė šį mėnesį atvyksta į Vilnių. Kaip skelbia Vilniaus lapai, Lapkričio 19 d. bus susitikimas su skaitytojais.
March 20, 2024
in awe of how sayaka murata's writing is endlessly as grotesque as it is compelling
November 12, 2022
“I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.”
“だって、正常は発狂の一種でしょう？この世で唯一の、許される発狂を正常と呼ぶんだって、僕は思います。”
🍲👁🫀🍲👁🫀 🍲👁🫀🍲👁🫀
Sensual and melancholy, Murata's fantastically strange short story collection captures the human condition in a raw, humorous voice, with her general propensity to violate the expectations of society. Cannibalism, incest, nonconforming relationships and living arrangements, sexual inclinations, culinary preferences, and exploiting humans as material resources are all explored in the stories. The collection's underlying idea is that being "normal" is essentially relative: what is normal, anyway?
“Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming.”
All of Murata's tales have the unsettling impression that social norms don't always make as much sense as individuals would like to believe. Should we cling to tradition and squeeze ourselves into neat, little boxes because that’s what society expects of us? Or should we fearlessly and unabashedly embrace our true selves in the wake of an ever changing world?
The collection's several stories force the reader to consider the societal conventions from which they can never fully stray. “Life Ceremony” destabilizes our views of what is 'normal' vs. taboo or forbidden, by exposing the absurdities and hypocrisies of different standard beliefs. Many of these stories are either set in the near future or in an alternate universe where societal norms have changed and there are new restrictions and standards on which behaviors are acceptable, or who is ostracized.
In essence, the narrative emphasizes the risks associated with presenting a well cultivated character to others, particularly if we fail to recognize our true values and tendencies.
At their finest, these horrific stories are infused with a sensitive compassion for their protagonists' flaws. Though people have a capacity for great cruelty, they have the potential for limitless compassion in equal measure. Quirkiness or child-like wonder aren’t traits to suppress, and swimming against the current doesn’t have to be an act of rebellion.
Although far from perfect, Murata's new collection manages to be a lighthearted read while challenging us to consider aspects of humanity that we would rather not confront. The stories in "Life Ceremony" are unsettling, visceral, and wildly amusing, and will stay with the reader long after they've closed the book.
“だって、正常は発狂の一種でしょう？この世で唯一の、許される発狂を正常と呼ぶんだって、僕は思います。”
🍲👁🫀🍲👁🫀 🍲👁🫀🍲👁🫀
Sensual and melancholy, Murata's fantastically strange short story collection captures the human condition in a raw, humorous voice, with her general propensity to violate the expectations of society. Cannibalism, incest, nonconforming relationships and living arrangements, sexual inclinations, culinary preferences, and exploiting humans as material resources are all explored in the stories. The collection's underlying idea is that being "normal" is essentially relative: what is normal, anyway?
“Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming.”
All of Murata's tales have the unsettling impression that social norms don't always make as much sense as individuals would like to believe. Should we cling to tradition and squeeze ourselves into neat, little boxes because that’s what society expects of us? Or should we fearlessly and unabashedly embrace our true selves in the wake of an ever changing world?
The collection's several stories force the reader to consider the societal conventions from which they can never fully stray. “Life Ceremony” destabilizes our views of what is 'normal' vs. taboo or forbidden, by exposing the absurdities and hypocrisies of different standard beliefs. Many of these stories are either set in the near future or in an alternate universe where societal norms have changed and there are new restrictions and standards on which behaviors are acceptable, or who is ostracized.
In essence, the narrative emphasizes the risks associated with presenting a well cultivated character to others, particularly if we fail to recognize our true values and tendencies.
At their finest, these horrific stories are infused with a sensitive compassion for their protagonists' flaws. Though people have a capacity for great cruelty, they have the potential for limitless compassion in equal measure. Quirkiness or child-like wonder aren’t traits to suppress, and swimming against the current doesn’t have to be an act of rebellion.
Although far from perfect, Murata's new collection manages to be a lighthearted read while challenging us to consider aspects of humanity that we would rather not confront. The stories in "Life Ceremony" are unsettling, visceral, and wildly amusing, and will stay with the reader long after they've closed the book.
November 4, 2022
I am huge fan of Japanese literature and short stories. Life Ceremony was a thought provoking collection. Here are my thoughts on and some quotes from each story:
A First Rate Material explores the shift in what is deemed culturally acceptable. In this reality, the human body is used as a natural resource. There are rings made from bone and sweaters from hair. There are people who oppose and others embrace this practice. It was interesting as one of the characters looked back to the time before and tried to pinpoint the shift in how human remains are used.
A Magnificent Spread explores our beliefs in what foods are an acceptable diet-what we eat and why we eat it. It explores our relationship with food and how food impacts our relationships with others. Two quotes that capture the essence of the story.
“What people eat is part of their own culture. It’s the culmination of their own unique personal life experiences. And it’s wrong to force it on other people.”
“I think eating something is a matter of trusting the world that produced it. But there’s also sincerity in not trusting something and refusing it. I myself wouldn’t eat these products if my husband didn’t buy them.”
A Summer Night’s Kiss
Summer is the season for kissing. That’s what her friend Kikue used to say, Yoshiko suddenly remembered as she took in the strong fragrance of the summer’s night through the screen door.
Yoshiko had just turned seventy-five. She had never had sex and hadn’t kissed anyone either. She had never even once had intercourse with her older husband, who had died five years earlier. Both of their daughters had been conceived by artificial insemination, and she was still a virgin when she became a mother. Both daughters were now married, and she was thoroughly enjoying living alone in the house her husband had left to her.
Two’s Family
Yoshiko and Kikue had been classmates in high school. They had made a promise to each other that if they hadn’t married by the time they reached thirty, they’d live together. Lots of other girls said similar things, but they were the only two who actually went through with it. Yet hardly anyone understood this.
A great quote that captures the essence of this story is: “Mom, do you really expect society to understand? As long as we’re okay with things, why should it bother us? If it does, I don’t think we can carry on like this.”
The Time of the Large Star
Never sleepy. Magic sands. Once there, people can never sleep and can’t leave. Girl and boy promise to one day try to faint together.
When the sun went down, and the Time of the Little Stars began, the town grew lively. The townspeople said they didn’t like the Large Star. It came too close, its rays were too strong, and it was too hot and bright. Time of the Large Star reminded me of the masterful works of Ray Bradbury.
Poochie Is a strange and creepy tale. Not the pet one would expect, but not surprised within the context of this collection.
Life Ceremony won’t be for everyone. I’m not sure if allegory is the right word. I need some time to “digest” this one and will come back and add my review.
Puzzle was a very interesting read. You get the feeling of an “awakening” or a “new awareness” of a parallel world/reality like in the Matrix. An interesting perspective on life, internal organs, and organisms’ interconnectedness.
Eating the City is another story about our relationship with food. It juxtaposes city eating against country beating, buying food that is wilting and picking/foraging for food just before eating it. The main character struggles with this and tries to find a balance between the two while living in the city. I really enjoyed this one.
Hatchling is a story about identity and personality. The main character didn’t have her own so she acted in the way others around her expected her to be, whether a brainiac or a goofball. It was interesting to see how she interacted with others from different stages in her life, particularly with her future husband as they planned their wedding. This was one of my favorites.
A First Rate Material explores the shift in what is deemed culturally acceptable. In this reality, the human body is used as a natural resource. There are rings made from bone and sweaters from hair. There are people who oppose and others embrace this practice. It was interesting as one of the characters looked back to the time before and tried to pinpoint the shift in how human remains are used.
A Magnificent Spread explores our beliefs in what foods are an acceptable diet-what we eat and why we eat it. It explores our relationship with food and how food impacts our relationships with others. Two quotes that capture the essence of the story.
“What people eat is part of their own culture. It’s the culmination of their own unique personal life experiences. And it’s wrong to force it on other people.”
“I think eating something is a matter of trusting the world that produced it. But there’s also sincerity in not trusting something and refusing it. I myself wouldn’t eat these products if my husband didn’t buy them.”
A Summer Night’s Kiss
Summer is the season for kissing. That’s what her friend Kikue used to say, Yoshiko suddenly remembered as she took in the strong fragrance of the summer’s night through the screen door.
Yoshiko had just turned seventy-five. She had never had sex and hadn’t kissed anyone either. She had never even once had intercourse with her older husband, who had died five years earlier. Both of their daughters had been conceived by artificial insemination, and she was still a virgin when she became a mother. Both daughters were now married, and she was thoroughly enjoying living alone in the house her husband had left to her.
Two’s Family
Yoshiko and Kikue had been classmates in high school. They had made a promise to each other that if they hadn’t married by the time they reached thirty, they’d live together. Lots of other girls said similar things, but they were the only two who actually went through with it. Yet hardly anyone understood this.
A great quote that captures the essence of this story is: “Mom, do you really expect society to understand? As long as we’re okay with things, why should it bother us? If it does, I don’t think we can carry on like this.”
The Time of the Large Star
Never sleepy. Magic sands. Once there, people can never sleep and can’t leave. Girl and boy promise to one day try to faint together.
When the sun went down, and the Time of the Little Stars began, the town grew lively. The townspeople said they didn’t like the Large Star. It came too close, its rays were too strong, and it was too hot and bright. Time of the Large Star reminded me of the masterful works of Ray Bradbury.
Poochie Is a strange and creepy tale. Not the pet one would expect, but not surprised within the context of this collection.
Life Ceremony won’t be for everyone. I’m not sure if allegory is the right word. I need some time to “digest” this one and will come back and add my review.
Puzzle was a very interesting read. You get the feeling of an “awakening” or a “new awareness” of a parallel world/reality like in the Matrix. An interesting perspective on life, internal organs, and organisms’ interconnectedness.
Eating the City is another story about our relationship with food. It juxtaposes city eating against country beating, buying food that is wilting and picking/foraging for food just before eating it. The main character struggles with this and tries to find a balance between the two while living in the city. I really enjoyed this one.
Hatchling is a story about identity and personality. The main character didn’t have her own so she acted in the way others around her expected her to be, whether a brainiac or a goofball. It was interesting to see how she interacted with others from different stages in her life, particularly with her future husband as they planned their wedding. This was one of my favorites.
February 13, 2022
‘When you eat something someone makes for you, it means you believe in the world they live in, right? Even if people have fun hearing about your world, putting it into their mouth is another matter – there is no way I can eat it unless I believe in it –. It’s only when we believe in the person who makes it that we’re able to put weird stuff in our mouth.’
Like Earthlings, I am sure that there will be a lot of extremely conflicted reviews. Regardless, you would most probably want to read it anyway if you stumbled on the blurbs, because the transgressive styles/tone of Murata’s work draws you in almost too quickly…into an exploration of what is normal/abnormal as a human being/person ‘living’ and eventually/inevitably ‘dying’ in this world we live in. Initially (esp. when I was reading ‘Earthlings’), I did think that I would enjoy the book more if I was better informed about the ‘Japanese society’, but the more time has passed, the more I have thought about it, and ultimately having also read more of Murata’s writing, I have come to realise that whatever Murata is trying to explore and/or learn about why ‘society’ is the way it is, and if such predictable, repetitive, ‘organised’ existence is really ‘normal’. And if that is so, then why is more than half of us (if not more) always struggling – to ‘act’ in ways that is considered ‘normal’; compromising too much, and/or giving up on our preferred ways of ‘living’ and ‘dying’.
‘It was tiny, less than one tatami mat in size, and looking out through the glass gave the sensation of being a goldfish in a bowl.
I blew out smoke from the cigarette I’d cadged from him. We chatted in the white fog we created from the smoke, gazing at the clear world outside.’
The moment I had finished the first story (which explores the ideas of recycling our physical human selves after death), I knew I was going to like this one more than I did ‘Earthlings’. ‘Earthlings’ was one of my top favourites reads of 2021, but it felt a bit lacking (esp. structurally), and I also didn’t enjoy the narrative tone (which was as expected because I don’t usually enjoy ‘child narrators’). Having read this newly translated collection of Murata’s stories, I understood more of why and what I found lacking in her previous work. Everything she tried to bring our attention to in ‘Earthlings’ was too subtle, but because it’s so subtle, it ran the risk of being to obscure – hence the mixed reviews from readers. Murata’s novels/stories take a bit of work/patience. Although I’ve mentioned that Murata’s work/satire is not limited to a play on ‘Japanese culture’, it does help quite a bit if one is slightly acquainted with some of that (I have shared a few things that might be of interest at the end of this review).
‘Nobody mentions the person inside the cartoon-character costume, do they? Everyone’s lying a bit. That’s what makes it a dream country. Our world isn’t any different, is it? Everyone 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.’
I can write pages and pages about my thoughts regarding Murata’s latest collection of short stories. I had compared her to Moshfegh. Both writers are daring enough to compose brilliantly transgressive work of fiction. While Moshfegh shines most brightly when she’s writing shorts, I don’t think that applies to Murata (anymore). I see Murata’s ‘short stories’ more as pieces of unfinished drafts to a larger piece of work. And of course, a few in it were too much like ‘Earthlings’. Those I didn’t enjoy so much, because I have already read the ‘polished’ version of those pieces, which is – well, ‘Earthlings’. To clarify, I don’t think Murata is best at writing short stories, because after reading every one of them in her collection, I have a desperate want for her to take each of them further – and to turn them into more ‘complete’ pieces of writing – if not a novel then a novella. Each story (other than the ones that had reminded me of ‘Earthlings’) was so different, so bizarre, and so fucking brilliant.
‘Everyone was grateful for her having given birth for the benefit of the human race. She looked pleased as she accepted the bouquet of flowers presented to her.’
I praised the translation work highly when I was reading ‘Earthlings’, but with this one, I wasn’t as satisfied; but it would also be wildly inaccurate to call it a bad translation. You may get what I mean after reading the first story. It’s very simply translated (and this sort of translation style fit ‘Earthlings’ very well, I felt), but because these stories have a different set of themes and include more ‘adult’ characters/issues (more deeply anyway), it made me want a bit more from the translator. At least, I suppose, it has an advantage of being very ‘readable’. One can easily finish the whole thing in a couple of days, but I took my time with it for many reasons (mostly personal and irrelevant), and I found that this was surprisingly the best way to go about it. You have to savour each story slowly, otherwise choke literarily. I think if I had devoured them all too quickly, I’d have judged them too quickly and inaccurately.
‘I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.’
Murata’s writing usually/often explores ‘women’s place in society’. The concluding story of the collection is led by a woman with multiple personalities, and even though she views all of those personalities as ‘herself’/relatives, her friends and fiancé have a hard time accepting ‘them’. I don’t think the protagonist has ‘multiple personalities’ as she so often claims, but only that unlike everyone else around her, she just happens to have a harder time navigating between different sides of herself. She couldn’t understand how everyone else could do it so seamlessly while she struggles. I have a suspicious feeling that one’s similar to Convenience Store Woman except I can’t confidently say so because I did not give that book the attention it deserved (much needed re-read at some point).
From a more ‘Western’ perspective, I’d like to refer to a quote that reminds me of Murata’s writing, albeit indirectly :
‘The first feminist gesture is to say: “OK, they're looking at me. But I'm looking at them.” The act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them.’ – Agnés Varda.
Most of the (girls/women) protagonists in Murata’s work always have to ‘fight’ for a sense of self instead of being like ‘right, this is me, if you don’t like what you see then that’s your problem not mine’ (like the women protagonists written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge). This is why I always find Murata’s protagonists so tragic, so heartbreakingly so. The protagonist in the concluding story in the collection doesn’t seem to have a sense of her ‘true’ self because she had always replaced the need for it with a version or more of herself that she has constructed to ‘suit’ others. I think it was such a cleverly written story, but I will still scoff and bemoan about the briefness of it. But if it makes one so desperate for a longer story, surely that is a clear evidence that the work’s fucking brilliant, no?
Earlier this year, I started a new account on IG. Firstly, to ‘keep track’ of my plants (or at least encourage myself to do that), and secondly to see what the online plant community is like. It’s so strange to have (essentially strangers) people drop me DMs to ask if I want a cutting of their plants because they think it’s the sort of plants I’d like. These gentle/kind offerings have been so refreshing in comparison to the unsolicited dick pics /‘sexts’/booty calls (and everything along those lines) that I had received in my personal account. Made me think of how comfortable it is to be a ‘user’ of an account without any photos of my ‘face’. Why is being ‘faceless’ so much more comfortable? To paraphrase what (ethnobotanist) James Wong had shared on his IG account recently: ‘Don’t ask me if I’m free for dinner, because if you do, you know that you’re basically flirting with foliage, right?’. Ah, oh so les Metamorphoses.
That, together with Murata’s writing/ideas – makes one wonder about how many sides of us/ourselves can we have? And is it just for someone else’s convenience and comfort that we sometimes commit to a different version of ourselves? And sometimes we do it out of ‘love’, and that is okay, right? And/but is it too much to ask – to ask one person (for instance a lover/partner) to accept all sides/versions of yourself? Is that ‘unfair’ since you don’t expect this from anyone else? And what if they were only interested in one version of you, and that is all they thought they’d ‘signed up for’? I guess, for me, that felt like what Murata’s concluding story was ‘questioning’/exploring. She’s such a brilliant writer it gives me pain to know that I’m not fluent in Japanese. I always feel like I haven’t fully ‘experienced’ her stories, having surely missed some bits (not because of not being fluent in Japanese, but just in general).
I want to bring attention to the titular story which I’d enjoy very much (even though phrasing it that way feels very odd/not ‘right’ considering what the story’s about). It’s arguably my favourite one in the collection just because it made me feel a whole spectrum of emotions in such a short amount of time. It leaves me with a rather strange taste/feeling, knowing that I’ve been reading a lot of books (notably Cixous’s Stigmata: Escaping Texts) about ‘the rituals of eating x human relationships/connections’ recently. But having done all that conveniently makes for a better understanding (if not understanding then the ‘experience’ of it all). The titular story carries a strong focus on what how we can make the best of one’s ‘death’. It shares very similar themes to the first story of the collection, but while the first story is about how ‘sustainability’ and recycling ‘dead bodies’ (turning them into furniture and clothing), Murata takes this even further in the titular story (you’ll have to read it as I wouldn’t want to be the one to do the disservice of spoiling this absolutely delectable story).
‘Put it like that, it kind of makes us sound like plants sending out pollen, doesn’t it? When a life ends, it flies far away and fertilises new life.’
None of Murata’s stories have ever moved me quite as much as the titular story of her short story collection did. And no, I would never eat human meat, but if asked to do so by someone I hold dearly, would I do it? Could I do it? I very much doubt it. The story was composed so brilliantly. I was so grossed out by it, but at its core – I can’t deny that it has such a raw sense of tenderness, endearment and ‘love’. If not love for one another, then love for ‘humanity’. But if love (in the story) requires so much sacrifice so constantly, are we doing it right? Who are we doing it for really? Each other? Or everyone else? Is ‘society’ just a big fucking orgy with a side of casual cannibalism? Murata went so intensely punk-rock on this one. And it reminds me slightly of the tone/vibes (not the horror) in Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny.
While I was reading/finishing Murata’s collection of stories, I was having a conversation with someone who was randomly telling me about how he felt guilty eating chicken. In response to that, I told him that I think we should start eating rabbits instead of chicken for sustainability’s sake. One irrelevant topic led to another, we ended up agreeing about how McCandless (Into the Wild) had fucked up by going in alone. If he had a mate with him, he’d still be here today. And then I had to go and conclude all of that by saying something quite absurd like (to loosely paraphrase) – one should bring a mate on a ‘trip’ like that because when winter comes and there is no ‘food’ available at least one of us can eat the other one for survival’s sake. People need people (stealing a line from Phoebe Waller-Bridge, obviously) whatever the reasons may be. What I had meant to say was that there’s just a fine line between ‘sustainability’ and ‘survival’ (and how fine and flexible is that line, really? can it be trusted/be relied on?), no? A while after that conversation ended, I wondered if I had made him think that I wanted to eat him and/or the other way around? And if there was a difference to that?
‘The seaside is great. Humans have lived by the ocean since ancient times, so out DNA responds to it fondly – . We humans were here for only a moment, the time it takes to blink in the flow of time experienced by the big lump we call Earth. In that enormously long moment, we continued to evolve and transform. I was here in a momentary scene of the never-ending kaleidoscope.’
Ultimately, isn’t that what Murata’s titular story was trying to imply? Challenging the boundaries/ethics of ‘sustainability’ and human survival? I think her work is especially relevant to the world we live in at the moment – where everything and every day keeps feeling more and more like a ‘dystopia’; and also, the ever so real and ever so threatening (to put it very plainly) ‘climate crisis’ constantly lurking in the background of our daily lives. With that in mind, it’s unsurprising that Murata had chosen to have ‘food’/rituals of eating be so central to the plotlines of her stories. I can’t praise her work any further without spoiling the reading experience of any prospective readers.
Even though there were a couple of stories in here that were more of a 3.5/4, I really have to give this one a 5. Like the rest of her previously published work (available in English), you’re not really supposed to ‘like’ any of the characters. And if you’re the sort of reader who needs that sort of ‘satisfaction’ in your general reading experience(s), then Murata’s writing will probably not work for you. This is a long review, but I can assure you that it was a lot longer before I saw the total word count of how much I had ‘rambled’ (but mostly raved) and trimmed it down further. Extremely thankful for the ARC; I didn’t think I’d be given one considering my chaotic, undisciplined reading/reviewing history w/ ARCs.
‘Life must be tough for you – why not just enjoy yourself in this momentary world of lies?’
I’d like to recommend these to read before/after Murata’s novels/stories :
Rethinking Japanese Feminisms
‘The Paradox of Mariko Mori’s Women in the Post-Bubble Japan: Office Ladies, Schoolgirls, and Video Vixens’ by Jonathan Wallis.
‘Magic, "Shōjo", and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society’ by Kumiko Saito.
March 28, 2024
Thank you, Grove Atlantic, for the advance reading copy.
I find the first three short stories really intriguing and the rest of the stories somewhat extra to add it to the list.
But I did enjoy the entire read letting myself expect not too much and not too less considering the previous books by the author and my reading experience of the same.
I was quite surprised when I found myself enjoying the first few stories but I had to calm myself down while reading each of them reminding myself not to throw up, convincing myself that they are just stories.
Read this collection if you feel you'd not react adversely while reading about body fluids/excretion, human meat in details in some stories plus some other weird topics which you wouldn't expect from a normal short story.
Yes, go for this collection of you feel like reading a weird story collection.
I find the first three short stories really intriguing and the rest of the stories somewhat extra to add it to the list.
But I did enjoy the entire read letting myself expect not too much and not too less considering the previous books by the author and my reading experience of the same.
I was quite surprised when I found myself enjoying the first few stories but I had to calm myself down while reading each of them reminding myself not to throw up, convincing myself that they are just stories.
Read this collection if you feel you'd not react adversely while reading about body fluids/excretion, human meat in details in some stories plus some other weird topics which you wouldn't expect from a normal short story.
Yes, go for this collection of you feel like reading a weird story collection.
April 23, 2022
ARC received in exchange for an honest review 👀
As other early reviewers have said, this has a tone more similar to Earthlings than Convenience Store Woman, with stories that purposely shock and fascinate in equal measure. Prepare to be confused while also questioning all sorts of societal constructs and cultural issues. Below is a breakdown of all the stories, with a brief review.
A First Rate Material - A newly engaged couple fight over one's disgust at using human material for their clothing and furniture. By material I mean skin. And teeth. And toe nails. Yeah. I was both disgusted and fascinated.
A Magnificent Spread - What starts as two sisters planning an informal engagement meet up descends into a discussion on cultural representation through food and personal choice. I'm still not sure what I read, and the sister of the protagonist has some serious issues. Confusing.
A Summer Night's Kiss - Incredibly short conversation between two elderly women who are polar opposites yet great friends. They eat some warabi mochi that reminds one of them of a boys tongue. The end.
Two's Family - The story of an unconventional family. Two women make a pact that if they're both single at 30 then they'll move in together. They start a family, and reflect on the obstacles and prejudices they've faced because of their decisions. I really liked this one, with its examination on what makes a family and tradition and the bonds of love.
The Time of a Large Star - A young girl can't sleep under the light of a large star. I'm not sure what the point of this was.
Poochie - Two girls look after a very unconventional pet. It was creepy.
Life Ceremony - Another story that was equal parts horrifying yet intriguing in an anthropological way. In a near future the human race is dying out, leading to life ceremonies becoming popular. Basically people eat the dead to absorb their life essence then pair off and impregnate each other. I found myself absorbed by the quiet rituals and the conversations about how perceptions change rapidly in society and taboo topics become the norm. Thought provoking. But also really gross.
Body Magic - Teenagers being teenagers. This is about sexual awakenings, exploring sexuality and each others bodies. It reminded me of Earthlings, and that's not a good thing.
Lover on the Breeze - a story told from the perspective of a pair curtains. They're a fly on the wall as the occupant traverses early romance.
Puzzle - Genuinely don't know what I read here, beyond a woman who doesn't think of herself as a living organism become obsessed with other people's bodily fluids. I didn't really see the point of this one.
Eating the City - Surprisingly mundane compared to the previous stories. It's a tale derived from wanting to feel close to nature and the past through invoking memories by eating wild dandelions and other plants.
Hatchling - A woman tried to reconcile her various different personas and social circles for her upcoming wedding. Each circle knows her as someone very different, and she's unsure how to approach the wedding. This was another one I actually found really boring.
A Clean Marriage - An asexual couple go to a fertility centre in the hopes of conceiving a child through medical means. And then it goes really off the wall. Another weird and gross one.
Another weird and unique read from Sayaka Murata. My favourites were definitely Two's Family and the titular Life Ceremony due to its ability to toe the line between abhorrent and fascinating. If you liked Murata's earlier works, I don't think you'd be disappointed with this offering.
As other early reviewers have said, this has a tone more similar to Earthlings than Convenience Store Woman, with stories that purposely shock and fascinate in equal measure. Prepare to be confused while also questioning all sorts of societal constructs and cultural issues. Below is a breakdown of all the stories, with a brief review.
A First Rate Material - A newly engaged couple fight over one's disgust at using human material for their clothing and furniture. By material I mean skin. And teeth. And toe nails. Yeah. I was both disgusted and fascinated.
A Magnificent Spread - What starts as two sisters planning an informal engagement meet up descends into a discussion on cultural representation through food and personal choice. I'm still not sure what I read, and the sister of the protagonist has some serious issues. Confusing.
A Summer Night's Kiss - Incredibly short conversation between two elderly women who are polar opposites yet great friends. They eat some warabi mochi that reminds one of them of a boys tongue. The end.
Two's Family - The story of an unconventional family. Two women make a pact that if they're both single at 30 then they'll move in together. They start a family, and reflect on the obstacles and prejudices they've faced because of their decisions. I really liked this one, with its examination on what makes a family and tradition and the bonds of love.
The Time of a Large Star - A young girl can't sleep under the light of a large star. I'm not sure what the point of this was.
Poochie - Two girls look after a very unconventional pet. It was creepy.
Life Ceremony - Another story that was equal parts horrifying yet intriguing in an anthropological way. In a near future the human race is dying out, leading to life ceremonies becoming popular. Basically people eat the dead to absorb their life essence then pair off and impregnate each other. I found myself absorbed by the quiet rituals and the conversations about how perceptions change rapidly in society and taboo topics become the norm. Thought provoking. But also really gross.
Body Magic - Teenagers being teenagers. This is about sexual awakenings, exploring sexuality and each others bodies. It reminded me of Earthlings, and that's not a good thing.
Lover on the Breeze - a story told from the perspective of a pair curtains. They're a fly on the wall as the occupant traverses early romance.
Puzzle - Genuinely don't know what I read here, beyond a woman who doesn't think of herself as a living organism become obsessed with other people's bodily fluids. I didn't really see the point of this one.
Eating the City - Surprisingly mundane compared to the previous stories. It's a tale derived from wanting to feel close to nature and the past through invoking memories by eating wild dandelions and other plants.
Hatchling - A woman tried to reconcile her various different personas and social circles for her upcoming wedding. Each circle knows her as someone very different, and she's unsure how to approach the wedding. This was another one I actually found really boring.
A Clean Marriage - An asexual couple go to a fertility centre in the hopes of conceiving a child through medical means. And then it goes really off the wall. Another weird and gross one.
Another weird and unique read from Sayaka Murata. My favourites were definitely Two's Family and the titular Life Ceremony due to its ability to toe the line between abhorrent and fascinating. If you liked Murata's earlier works, I don't think you'd be disappointed with this offering.
March 12, 2024
Weird
Murata's stories explores our relationship with food, family, friends by introducing new concepts and then opens our eyes to possible interpretations. My initial reaction to most of these new introductions was queasiness than an appreciation.
Murata picks up 'normal' and changes it. We make normal, acceptable by creating an acceptable story about it. So as long as the 'story' holds up the normal continues. Once that changes then all doors are open.
An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley
Murata's stories explores our relationship with food, family, friends by introducing new concepts and then opens our eyes to possible interpretations. My initial reaction to most of these new introductions was queasiness than an appreciation.
Murata picks up 'normal' and changes it. We make normal, acceptable by creating an acceptable story about it. So as long as the 'story' holds up the normal continues. Once that changes then all doors are open.
An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley
July 17, 2022
Despite (or perhaps because of?) the cannibalism and other assorted taboo-breaking, I loved Life Ceremony, just as I expected to. Murata remains a must-read-no-matter-what author for me!
My full review of Life Ceremony is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
My full review of Life Ceremony is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
January 31, 2023
so outlandish, weird and brilliant at the same time. didn't expect anything less from this author.
February 9, 2023
After reading almost everything Sayaka Murata has written (at least the work that has been translated) I started to see a pattern, and I'm not really surprised or shocked anymore at her work, for as surprising and shocking it might be. It seems to me like her books are focusing more and more on the grotesque and disturbing side, and her analysis of today's Japanese society, with special care for the outcasts, is becoming less interesting as a consequence. What I mean is I personally preferred something like Earthlings, in which this feeling of uneasiness grows gradually through the novel, which starts almost tame, and descents into a madness that still haunts me today. This one, I don't know, I'd preferred something more subtle.
I get why there's so few five-star reviews, despite it being an objectively good book. I also feel like this novel might feel much different to a Japanese person, as they will be able to understand many nuances that I, as a European, am blind to. Anyway, if you've ever watched Oats studios on Netflix, this feels exactly like that. Not entirely my cup of tea, but pretty much impossible to look away.
July 25, 2022
Weird, gruesome, fun and wonderful. Not for the faint-hearted though 😊
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