Earthlings

August 1, 2020
A dark coming-of-age story from the author of Convenience Store Woman (2018). Murata made her English-language debut with the story of a 36-year-old woman who defies norms by embracing a life without a husband, children, or any hope of career advancement. This novel was a bestseller in Japan, and reviewers and other readers appreciated Murata's oddball heroine and deadpan wit. The protagonist of this book is another outsider. One of the first things 11-year-old Natsuki explains about herself is that she has magical powers and that her best friend--a plush hedgehog--is an emissary from the planet Popinpobopia. This is why she is not surprised when her cousin Yuu reveals that he's an alien. The sense of whimsy Murata creates is quickly crushed beneath the weight of the depravity Natsuki endures and the very unpleasant places her escape into fantasy takes her. Like Convenience Store Woman, this new novel is a critique of cultural expectations that limit what women can be and what they can do. Both as a child and as an adult, Natsuki resists being part of the "factory"--the system that will consign her to life as a wife and mother, a sex object and a good worker--and her desire to escape the Earth altogether persists. Like many an author before her, Murata uses surrealism and the tropes of horror and science fiction to explore real-world problems. But, here, she writes without subtlety or depth. Shocking scenes follow one after the other in a way that ultimately feels more pornographic than enlightening. Simultaneously too much and not enough.

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Starred review from August 24, 2020
Murata’s unsettling, madcap 11th novel (after Convenience Store Woman) chronicles the nightmarish discontent of one girl amid the deadening conformity of modern Japanese society. Natsuki does not have it easy: her mom favors her sister, her teacher sexually abuses her, and her only friend is the stuffed hedgehog Piyyut, who tells her he’s an alien from planet Popinpobopia. Natsuki looks forward to her family’s yearly holiday at her grandparents’ house in the mountains of Akishina, where she meets up with her like-minded cousin Yuu. But one year, Natsuki and Yuu are caught dabbling with sex and are not allowed to see one another again. Years pass, and Natsuki marries Tomoya, a man she doesn’t sleep with or love romantically. They both, however, connect over their shared rage against “The Factory,” their name for the society in which they are trapped and are expected to act as “components... that just keep on manufacturing children.” After Tomoya is fired from his job, they flee to Akishina and find that Yuu has also returned. Portents come in the form of winter landslides and the brutal murder of Natsuki’s former teacher by a stalker, and a horrific series of events ensues as Natsuki, Yuu, and Tomoya, believing they are not earthlings but aliens like Piyyut, resort to violence and depravity. The author’s flat, deadpan prose makes the child Natsuki’s narration strangely and instantly believable and later serves to reflect her relationship to Japan’s societal anxiety. This eye-opening, grotesque outing isn’t to be missed.

September 1, 2020
Akutagawa Prize-winning Murata (Convenience Store Woman, 2018), with her lauded, chosen translator Takemori?two short stories and now two novels thus far?for more societally defiant, shockingly disconnected, disturbingly satisfying fiction. At 11, Natsuki is already aware she doesn't fit into her family: If I wasn't here, the three of them would make a perfect unit. Her closest connection is cousin Yuu, whom she sees only once a year when the extended family gathers at their grandparents' remote home to commemorate ancestors during Obon. The children mutually confess they're Planet Popinpobopia aliens, trapped in The Factory to mature into humanity-saving breeders. Natsuki, at least, has Piyyut, a magic-endowing Popinpobopia emissary (actually a stuffed toy hedgehog) who saves her from her predatory, pedophilic teacher. When the cousins find (inappropriate) comfort against the world, the adults harshly separate them. Reunion only happens 23 years later when Natsuki takes her unconventional husband to the ancestral home where Yuu has been sequestering. What happens is?well, yes?out of this world. Murata again confronts and devastates so-called normal, proper behavior to create an unflinching expos� of society.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from October 1, 2020

Recalling the socially out-of-step heroine of Murata's acclaimed Convenience Store Woman, Natsuki lives with her parents and sister in a uniformly gray town and sees society as a Factory for producing babies and keeping everyone in line. She's routinely dumped on by her family and preyed upon by her pop-star handsome cram-school teacher. But she can rely on Piyyut, a stuffed-animal friend whom she insists has given her magical powers, and she looks forward each year to family gatherings at her grandparents' house in the Akishina mountains, where she can see her soulmate, cousin Yuu. Yuu proclaims himself an alien from outer space and promises to take Natsuki there, but their more mundane entanglements split the family apart, and she doesn't see him for years. As the story takes a dark turn, Murata expertly limns Natsuki's outsider status in a conformist, consumerist society, creating an indelible portrait of an imaginative young woman learning to survive. VERDICT Original in conception and astute in its social critique; highly recommended.

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