Jola's Reviews > Diary of a Void

So quirky, so weirdly absorbing... While reading Diary of a Void I kept obsessively thinking how much this novel reminds me of The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura and thanks to a note at the end I realized it was translated by the same person, Lucy North, accompanied by David Boyd here. She did an impressive job again and I think it is great when translators, who usually tend to be transparent like cellophane, find a way to speak with their own voices, respecting the individuality of the book at the same time. And as for literary associations, I often recalled Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb too.

It is best to go totally blind into Diary of a Void. Having a baby isn’t easy. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. — this passage summarizes the theme of this novel. I liked the feminist message of Emi Yagi's book although I wish the rhetoric was not so straightforward.

Shibata's story is interspersed with acute social observations. To my mind, the portrayal of her workplace is intended as a bleak caricature not only of a Japanese company but of modern society in general. The conclusions are far from optimistic: The office was a swamp. Not a deep one. But one that let off a weird-smelling gas all year round.

I liked being subtly manipulated by Emi Yagi — the author blends the borderline between reality and Shibata's dreams truly deftly. I found interesting the way the symbol of the void was used in the novel. To my mind, it refers not only to the emptiness of the protagonist's uterus but also to the emotional vacuum in which she is floating, seemingly being perfectly fine. Emi Yagi's depiction of Shibata's loneliness is devastating despite the calm, down-to-earth, sometimes eerily hilarious tone of her narration.


Image by Laura Steerman, an Irish artist, who creates paintings using ultrasound images.
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