A review by lailybibliography
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

challenging dark reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

"...it's a wife's duty to be intimate, you know. Tomoya finds it hard to hold down a job, doesn't he? You have to support him in that regard, Natsuki. You're his wife!"
My body was not my own. I had always been secretly shirking the role I had been assigned as a tool of society. The time had come for me to be taken to task for this, I thought.

There is no plot to explain, really. If one truly tried to explain in detail what happens, you will sound insane and thoroughly gross-out anybody in hearing proximity. It is equal parts outrageous, bizarre, uncomfortable and truly, truly disturbing beyond words. The grotesquerie though, serves an important purpose - it's a cutting commentary on bodily autonomy, capitalism, Japanese societal expectation and the longterm traumas of childhood physical, emotional and sexual abuse. It is all described in graphic, nauseatingly straightforward prose, the simplistic language only helped to draw attention to the horror of banality; a never-ending cycle of school, work, reproduction over and over again. It is as if protagonist Natsuki is forever stuck in a state of perpetual childhood trauma, unable to maturely comprehend the horrors perpetrated on her body by those meant to protect her. It seems only natural then why she so doggedly rejects humanity and the physicality of her body (her partial deafness and ageusia due to childhood sexual assault by a tutor). For her, it is merely a vessel of meat and bones keeping her trapped on Earth, continually victimized by adults and wider society. The frankness in laying out the objectives of 'The Factory' (Natsuki and her husband Tomoya's term for society) and unflinching affirmation of the discriminatory systems of oppression underpinning modern late-capitalist Japan (i.e. misogyny, neuro-/ableism, homophobia, ace/arophobia) gets very uncomfortable to read.
 

My mother-in-law sighed. "Look, Tomoya. Do it a lot and make a family, then once the relationship has cooled, you play around outside the marriage. That's the way it is for lots of couples, isn't it? Playing around is a man's reward. Your father has had his fair share , haven't you dear?..."

Gee no wonder your son is a sexually traumatized freak on the verge of a complete psychotic break, lady.  

Is it truly all that horrifying for Natsuki, Tomoya and Yuu to relinquish societal norms and abandon themselves to their basest desires? How were the actions of those around them anymore inhumane than the gradual descent into psychosis, isolation and cannibalism? It's a challenging perspective and Sayaka Murata's prose definitely made me consider why certain things we are societally 'required' to do (go to school, stay employed, marry and have children, etc.) are so enforced when there is so much violence and coercion inherent to it? Why we are so adamant on dismissing platonic companionship in favour of sexual intimacy, which often brings along abuse, conformity and dangerous power dynamics? How one is meant to survive in the Factory when it purports to value personal individuality, yet prosecutes any disturbance of the status quo?


It was ludicrous. Grown-ups used children to satisfy their sexual desires, yet the very idea of children having sex of their own volition sent them into a total fit. It was laughable.

Truthfully, I cannot in good conscious ever recommend this deeply unsettling bildungsroman. This is one, I think, should be found and read by oneself. It's fast-paced, but reflective. There is a lot to contemplate with this one. What is indisputable though is the impressive literary talent of author Sayaka Murata. Her reputation precedes her and rightfully so. Earthlings, without a doubt, stands out as some of the grimmest, outlandish and subversive novels I have read, probably ever. 
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