Review: Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
Apr. 15th, 2021 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smalltimereads Earthlings by Sayaka Murata was published by Grove Atlantic, an independent publisher that does a lot of translated and international works.
This book is...A Lot. I mean that in a good way, but it's definitely not something someone should pick up hoping for a cute book about aliens. The writing is clear and straightforward and simple (huge shoutout to the translator, Ginny Tapley Takemori) and does a great job of conveying how distant Natsuki feels from society.
Although the prose is easy to read, the subject matter is often difficult- Natsuki is abused by her family and her teacher, and her attempts to rationalize or discuss either type of abuse is painful to see. While she makes some bad decisions, they're understandable in light of who she is and what she's experienced. And her distance from society (the Factory) makes sense, too. While I hadn't thought of it the same way, Natsuki's concept of society as a baby-making factory in which everyone is expected to do their parts rung true in a lot of ways.
The ending...it would have been easy to write it as a horror sequence, and it would have been incredibly effective horror. But that wasn't the POV, and that wasn't the book, and so instead it felt triumphant despite all the implied awfulness.
This book is...A Lot. I mean that in a good way, but it's definitely not something someone should pick up hoping for a cute book about aliens. The writing is clear and straightforward and simple (huge shoutout to the translator, Ginny Tapley Takemori) and does a great job of conveying how distant Natsuki feels from society.
Although the prose is easy to read, the subject matter is often difficult- Natsuki is abused by her family and her teacher, and her attempts to rationalize or discuss either type of abuse is painful to see. While she makes some bad decisions, they're understandable in light of who she is and what she's experienced. And her distance from society (the Factory) makes sense, too. While I hadn't thought of it the same way, Natsuki's concept of society as a baby-making factory in which everyone is expected to do their parts rung true in a lot of ways.
The ending...it would have been easy to write it as a horror sequence, and it would have been incredibly effective horror. But that wasn't the POV, and that wasn't the book, and so instead it felt triumphant despite all the implied awfulness.
