A review by coralinejones
Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

1.0

"You only know what it means to be poor, or have the right to talk about it, if you've been there yourself. Maybe you're poor now. Maybe you were poor in the past. I'm both. I was born poor, and I'm still poor."

I'm very disappointed in this. Breasts and Eggs was a read I was highly anticipating for a long time. The cover is so gorgeous and I've heard nothing but raving reviews about the commentary here. Unfortunately, after book one ends-Breasts-and we submerge ourselves into book two-Eggs-, the story changes so drastically that all my previous enjoyment got thrown out the window. I almost forgot why I was enjoying the novel in the first place.

To start, Breasts is a novella about a small family of women. Natsu, her older sister, and her niece. There's a lo about growing up poor, the mistakes mother's may make with their children, the struggles of poverty and self-image, especially as women get older. It was all very engaging. However, there was a scene at the end of chapter three that felt a little transphobic, to say the least. That aside, learning about Japanese society for single-women in the twenties and thrities and how they may struggle captured my attention. Some parts were even relatable.

Then we get to Eggs. Ughhhh.

Now we follow Natsu a few years later as she expresses her desire to become a mother. She's a published novelist and her sister and niece are nowhere to be found, at least for a good chunk of the book's remaining runtime. Odd. She does not like having sex and is navigating Japan trying to get on board with donor sperm insemination. This, despite many people's negative opinions on the procedure, including kid's who never knew their real father's/families because of this? I don't know. I'm sure there was something there, but again, I did not care.

Each passage is so long and meandering I can't help but call them boring. Maybe it's because I care so little about motherhood and wanting kids; so much, if not all of, Eggs was about Natsu wanting to have children of her own, whilst disliking intercourse; I wanted to bang my head against the wall.

In fact, there's an entire scene where Natsu is speaking to a donor and I kid you not he talks on and on about his sperm and how good it is. How fascinated he is about his own cum and how he has power fantasies about impregnating women because of how power his sperm was. He just kept TALKING. I was so tired of it.

Both halves of the book don't really come together in any way that's significant or meaningful to me. Eggs is twice as long as Breasts and didn't have anything interesting to say in comparison. I think Breasts is the only part of the book with reading and I wished the author either continued with that novella or simply published it on it's own.