Reviews - Breasts and Eggs

7.43k reviews for:

Breasts and Eggs

Mieko Kawakami

3.91 AVERAGE

haladi's review against another edition

2.75

sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Here’s a book that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. A unique narrative of the female body and the glory and horror of living in one? Or a simpler character arc of a woman deciding if being a mother was right for her or not. Either one of those books would have been quite good on its own. Combined together, it’s a bit of a mess. Read Diary of a Void instead.

Content Warnings

ladyandherdalmatian's review against another edition

3.25

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

phoebej_oy's review against another edition

5.0

The breadth of issues covered in this is significant, especially the connections between class and motherhood. The Breasts section was definitely the standout for me, but Eggs left a lot of room to explore complicated issues.

z_is_my_name_100's review against another edition

4.0

challenging informative reflective relaxing tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

lexilokeni's review against another edition

4.75

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

nada_elshabrawy's review against another edition

5.0

Impressive! Kawakami is a philosopher in the suit of a novelist.

حلقة عن الرواية الفلسفية وروايات كواكامي الثلاثة

https://youtu.be/PXZEbmcdlxE

humdrum_ts's review against another edition

3.5

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

There are always growing pains in the transition from short story or novella to a full novel. Transitions are difficult at the best of times, and I often find myself spotting the seams where additions have been welded onto a complete work. Mieko Kawakami’s approach is to not even make an attempt at concealment: the original novella surges to a climax, reaches its resolution, and then there’s an abrupt jump to a different scenario at a different time. It’s a hard shift in no small part because the novella is a gem, a perfectly-paced examination of three women at different stages of life, grappling with family, femininity, and poverty… while the remainder centers on the favorite topic of middle-aged authors: middle-aged authors. The first part prefers to show, the second part loves to slowly talk through its central issue from every angle. The first part uses its family dynamic to full effect, the second deliberately isolates the narrator. It started to become a book I had to force myself through. Then the book comes alive again in its final act, finally revealing the rhymes that make the stories a couplet and managing a moving ending - if only it had managed that a little sooner, I would have been blown away.