Sayaka Murata, Earthlings, Granta, 2020; hbk, £12.99.*
RATING: 90
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Buy this book?
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Yes
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* Earthlings purchased from Granta currently comes with free glow-in-the-dark totebag!
Short and sweet this month, in part to make up for lost time (this review corresponds to December 2020 - I was behind all year), and in part because in my annual reviews of new fiction I find it hard to cope with giving a sense of a novel without giving away anything that actually happens in it (very important, I'm told). A special mention to my daughter Ani there. And another to my friend Kanishka Jayasuriya, for recommending the excellent Japanese series Night Diner (Netflix), which will give you a sense of deep well-being - and a sudden desire for a Japanese take-away. As it happens, and while we are here, his recent recommendation for the Turkish series Ethos is spot-on too. So to Sayaka Murata, whose Earthlings follows and in some ways complements her strange and wonderful Convenience Store Woman (Granta, 2019). She has published several other novels, as yet untranslated into English, that touch on aspects of contemporary Japanese society related to the topics addressed here, and I wish I could read them too. These two are hard to classify - part fantasy, part comedy of manners, part social critique, and definitely with a darker side, but each full of good things. And while I can't judge the quality of the translations (by Ginny Tapley Takamori in each case), they both read very easily and naturally in English, so Murata has been well served.
In both novels, there is a device that puts the protagonist at one remove from the business of everyday life, and this in turn becomes an effective means of making the everyday seem strange. In the first, the narrator, Keiko Furukura, who describes herself as having been an odd child, struggles in life and becomes withdrawn after a couple of setbacks reveal that her take on the world is rather unusual, and only finds herself when she is 'reborn as a convenience store worker' (6). In other aspects of her life she manages by copying what other people do, in dress and behaviour, but at work she feels at home: 'When I first started here,' she says, 'there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual' (20). She has now spent 18 of her 36 years in this role, and because she buys all her food and mineral water there, her body is now 'entirely made up of food from this store' (42). The store is 'a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated' (60), but there as in life disorder is barely kept at bay, despite her constant efforts. All of this is imagined with sensitivity and wit, so that the events that follow retain a persuasive logic of their own. Sparely told as it is, the story lends itself to interpretation in a number of ways. I choose to see it as a modern fable about the contemporary world of work, and the all-encompassing demands of the identity 'worker'. And quite coincidentally, I'm sure, when I took a break after writing that sentence, I found a new link on my Facebook page to a review by Ross Sparkes, at the excellent Marx & Philosophy site, of Alastair Hemmens, The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought: From Charles Fourier to Guy Debord (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) which begins: 'Under capitalism, life is work and work is life'! Rather proves my point, I think. It sounds like an interesting book, if rather challenging for a 'beer-drinking regular guy like me'. And if you follow up that quote, adding 'lyrics' to help you find your way, you will get a pithy critique of high culture aesthetics from the perspective of the humble factory worker, and one that is easy to sing along to, into the bargain. My seasonal gift to you.
Coincidentally, again, that provides a neat link to the 'Baby Factory' in Earthlings, which develops themes similar to those in Convenience Store Woman, except that this time the aspect of life made strange by the distance taken by the narrator is the business of marriage and the raising of children. It starts, like its predecessor, from the ordinary everyday, opening as eleven-year-old Natsuki is on the way to her grand-parents' home in the mountains to the annual family gathering for the Obon festival. Natsuki endures constant criticism from her mother, who regularly declares her to be 'a dead loss', a judgement she has internalised, but she discloses (on page 2, so don't worry that I am giving too much away) that in her backpack she has a magic wand and a magical transformation mirror and that she has actual magical powers, all from her friend Piyyut, a plush white hedgehog soft toy (depicted on the cover) she has had since she was six, and who is from the Planet Popinpobopia: 'The magic Police had found out that Earth was facing a crisis and had sent him on a mission to save our planet. Since then I'd been using the powers he'd given me to protect the Earth' (2). Natsuki sees the town in which she lives as 'a factory for the production of human babies ... People live in nests packed closely together. ... The nests are lined up neatly in rows, and each contains a breeding pair of male and female humans and their babies' (35). Here it is the device of making her an 'alien' that renders the everyday strange: she consistently refers to her fellow citizens as 'earthlings', and comments upon their strange habits. Murata handles the narrative development with extraordinary confidence as the story develops from this point. Bad things happen, and Natsuki copes as best she can, hoping all the time that she will be 'brainwashed' like everyone else, so that she can fit in. In both novels, then, Murata presents our everyday world to us as strange. And with Earthlings, too, I'm sure that various interpretations are possible. She may or may not be versed in the 'critique of work' literature, or in the autonomous Marxist critique of the social factory that Earthlings calls to mind, but she is a powerful and distinctive voice. I recommend these books unreservedly, and implore you (I know this is a dangerous piece of advice, but still, I'm trusting to your self control) not to go looking for any interviews with Murata that may have accompanied the publication of Earthlings in English late last year. If you do, every last detail of the whole story will be thrust in front of you, after I have been so impressively circumspect.
(I also read and enjoyed Kikuko Tsumura, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job (Bloomsbury, 2020) - but I can't shake off the feeling that its message is a bit too embracing of neoliberal ideology with regard to work. I may have missed something. It complements Convenience Store Woman nicely, in a way. And I have high hopes for Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs (Picador, 2020), and thanks to Gareth Api Richards of the wonderful Gerakbudaya Bookshops in Penang for informing me of its existence).
Short and sweet this month, in part to make up for lost time (this review corresponds to December 2020 - I was behind all year), and in part because in my annual reviews of new fiction I find it hard to cope with giving a sense of a novel without giving away anything that actually happens in it (very important, I'm told). A special mention to my daughter Ani there. And another to my friend Kanishka Jayasuriya, for recommending the excellent Japanese series Night Diner (Netflix), which will give you a sense of deep well-being - and a sudden desire for a Japanese take-away. As it happens, and while we are here, his recent recommendation for the Turkish series Ethos is spot-on too. So to Sayaka Murata, whose Earthlings follows and in some ways complements her strange and wonderful Convenience Store Woman (Granta, 2019). She has published several other novels, as yet untranslated into English, that touch on aspects of contemporary Japanese society related to the topics addressed here, and I wish I could read them too. These two are hard to classify - part fantasy, part comedy of manners, part social critique, and definitely with a darker side, but each full of good things. And while I can't judge the quality of the translations (by Ginny Tapley Takamori in each case), they both read very easily and naturally in English, so Murata has been well served.
In both novels, there is a device that puts the protagonist at one remove from the business of everyday life, and this in turn becomes an effective means of making the everyday seem strange. In the first, the narrator, Keiko Furukura, who describes herself as having been an odd child, struggles in life and becomes withdrawn after a couple of setbacks reveal that her take on the world is rather unusual, and only finds herself when she is 'reborn as a convenience store worker' (6). In other aspects of her life she manages by copying what other people do, in dress and behaviour, but at work she feels at home: 'When I first started here,' she says, 'there was a detailed manual that taught me how to be a store worker, and I still don't have a clue how to be a normal person outside that manual' (20). She has now spent 18 of her 36 years in this role, and because she buys all her food and mineral water there, her body is now 'entirely made up of food from this store' (42). The store is 'a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated' (60), but there as in life disorder is barely kept at bay, despite her constant efforts. All of this is imagined with sensitivity and wit, so that the events that follow retain a persuasive logic of their own. Sparely told as it is, the story lends itself to interpretation in a number of ways. I choose to see it as a modern fable about the contemporary world of work, and the all-encompassing demands of the identity 'worker'. And quite coincidentally, I'm sure, when I took a break after writing that sentence, I found a new link on my Facebook page to a review by Ross Sparkes, at the excellent Marx & Philosophy site, of Alastair Hemmens, The Critique of Work in Modern French Thought: From Charles Fourier to Guy Debord (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) which begins: 'Under capitalism, life is work and work is life'! Rather proves my point, I think. It sounds like an interesting book, if rather challenging for a 'beer-drinking regular guy like me'. And if you follow up that quote, adding 'lyrics' to help you find your way, you will get a pithy critique of high culture aesthetics from the perspective of the humble factory worker, and one that is easy to sing along to, into the bargain. My seasonal gift to you.
Coincidentally, again, that provides a neat link to the 'Baby Factory' in Earthlings, which develops themes similar to those in Convenience Store Woman, except that this time the aspect of life made strange by the distance taken by the narrator is the business of marriage and the raising of children. It starts, like its predecessor, from the ordinary everyday, opening as eleven-year-old Natsuki is on the way to her grand-parents' home in the mountains to the annual family gathering for the Obon festival. Natsuki endures constant criticism from her mother, who regularly declares her to be 'a dead loss', a judgement she has internalised, but she discloses (on page 2, so don't worry that I am giving too much away) that in her backpack she has a magic wand and a magical transformation mirror and that she has actual magical powers, all from her friend Piyyut, a plush white hedgehog soft toy (depicted on the cover) she has had since she was six, and who is from the Planet Popinpobopia: 'The magic Police had found out that Earth was facing a crisis and had sent him on a mission to save our planet. Since then I'd been using the powers he'd given me to protect the Earth' (2). Natsuki sees the town in which she lives as 'a factory for the production of human babies ... People live in nests packed closely together. ... The nests are lined up neatly in rows, and each contains a breeding pair of male and female humans and their babies' (35). Here it is the device of making her an 'alien' that renders the everyday strange: she consistently refers to her fellow citizens as 'earthlings', and comments upon their strange habits. Murata handles the narrative development with extraordinary confidence as the story develops from this point. Bad things happen, and Natsuki copes as best she can, hoping all the time that she will be 'brainwashed' like everyone else, so that she can fit in. In both novels, then, Murata presents our everyday world to us as strange. And with Earthlings, too, I'm sure that various interpretations are possible. She may or may not be versed in the 'critique of work' literature, or in the autonomous Marxist critique of the social factory that Earthlings calls to mind, but she is a powerful and distinctive voice. I recommend these books unreservedly, and implore you (I know this is a dangerous piece of advice, but still, I'm trusting to your self control) not to go looking for any interviews with Murata that may have accompanied the publication of Earthlings in English late last year. If you do, every last detail of the whole story will be thrust in front of you, after I have been so impressively circumspect.
(I also read and enjoyed Kikuko Tsumura, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job (Bloomsbury, 2020) - but I can't shake off the feeling that its message is a bit too embracing of neoliberal ideology with regard to work. I may have missed something. It complements Convenience Store Woman nicely, in a way. And I have high hopes for Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs (Picador, 2020), and thanks to Gareth Api Richards of the wonderful Gerakbudaya Bookshops in Penang for informing me of its existence).