Sometimes I don't want to write a review of a book, simply because I don't feel up to the intellectual task of doing so. I've written of my insecurities around reading and reviewing literary work before, and once again I stand nervously on edge of literary criticism, feeling as dumb as a box of rocks.
But I read Earthlings [Sayaka Murata] and need talk about it.
Convenience Store Woman was one of the books that helped me out of my reading slump and considering that it was one of my earliest reviews, and my whole reading outlook has changed since then, Earthlings offers a lot of opportunity for reflection.
All I knew going in was that it was more divisive than Convenience Store Woman. I'd seen comments suggesting this book dials the strangeness up to eleven, but even I was caught off guard by the graphic horror hidden beneath the artfully cutesy cover.
[Please note that this review will discuss some of those events, which include sexual abuse and extreme violence.]
Perhaps it seems unfair to compare a book so openly with the author's other major work - especially as that author has written many books, though only three have been translated into English. But this book shares a lot of DNA with Convenience Store Woman, approaching the same issues from the other side. That book asked how one might maintain a façade in a society you neither fit into nor understand; this book asks how one might step outside it all together.
Earthlings follows Natsuki from her childhood visit to a remote family home, through to her eventual return as an adult. She is an imaginative but withdrawn child, constantly belittled by her mother, and believes she has been given magic powers by a stuffed toy. Her cousin Yuu is equally unhappy, which he claims is because he's actually an alien trying to get to his home world. The pre-pubescent cousins decide to 'marry' and are caught in a sexual act together, and are promptly - and with much family shame - separated.
When we next meet Natsuki, she is an adult in a sexless marriage of convenience that allows her to function in society (or 'The Factory'). Her husband - equally disgusted by society - is fascinated by tales of her childhood and convinces her to take him on a visit to the remote family home. There they find Yuu, who is staying there during a period of employment. Together, Natsuki and Yuu's childhood fantasies absorb the nameless husband and the three of them descend into violent group madness.
For all the aliens, magic, murder, cults and cannibalism... at it's core, this is a book about child abuse, and about building an identity after a trauma. Natsuki is initially dealing with a form of abuse she 'understands'. Her mother's criticism of her seems to have a logical cause (Natsuki's personality and actions) and can, she supposes, be remedied. Until that time, she has her fantasies to offer support.
But when she is preyed upon by a teacher the abuse is so beyond her comprehension that she can only understand it as something outside of reality, and from that point on Natsuki mentally resides outside of reality herself. Every attempt she makes to process what has happened - telling her mother, experimenting with her cousin - leads to more suffering and isolates her further.
There are plenty of the criticisms of Japan's restricted society ("The Factory") that we see in Convenience Store Woman, but done in a fresh way. In some ways Natsuki has achieved the aim of the main character in that book - she has found a husband who will shield her from society's judgement, at least until society demands the next thing. The difference here is the implication that - despite the inhuman things they do - the main characters in Earthlings were never destined for this life. The society that (they believe) wants to force them to be people they aren't has made them this way to begin with.
Unlike Convenience Store Woman's Keiko, who is so bewildered by society that the store is her only frame of reference, Natsuki isn't a particularly strange child. Her fantasies are no more weird than any other childhood play. Despite her mother's harshness, it's clear that she is liked by the wider family. One can easily imagine a slightly geeky adolescence and utterly ordinary life in her future. We see this with Natsuki's sister - a selfish and petted child, who grows into a perfectly average, if Karen-ish, woman. It's the abuse that sends Natsuki down a spiralling, alternate path.
My advice for the novel is not to be afraid of the surface strangeness - because the emotional core underneath is worth the effort. But don't expect an easy read.
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