nyxrain 's review for:

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

5.0

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I didn’t even know Breasts and Eggs was originally two separate works until I read reviews after finishing it. It kind of makes sense. The first part (Breasts) felt more like an intro than a full story. It was good, but it read like the author was mostly showing the themes -womanhood, puberty, poverty, agency- rather than going deep into them.

I loved how "plain" and real it was though. Kawakami shows a lot through little details, like class differences being revealed just by Natsu’s coworker being disgusted by one of her favourite restaurants.

The second part (Eggs) felt way more personal (borderline autobiographical?) which made it hit harder. I related way more to Natsuko’s whole spiral about motherhood and autonomy and how she keeps shifting between certainty and total confusion. I also liked the writing more in this part. It felt like a mirror of the first one, with Natsu’s dreams taking the place of Midoriko’s diary entries. The structure worked better, even if Breasts tackled more themes.

I really liked seeing what happened to Midoriko in the background. She turned out pretty “average,” which felt kind of sad and kind of hopeful. Like, yeah, she got out of the poverty, the teenage angst, the internalised misogyny and general chaos, but also... damn, she just became another adult (from what we’re shown).

Not going into spoilers, but my one complaint is the ending. Not Natsu’s decision itself, but how the book handled it. It felt like the author wasn’t quite sure what to do and just didn’t dig into it.

Spoiler take:

I’m talking about her relationship with Aizawa. I didn’t care that they didn’t end up together or that he wasn’t going to be involved as a father. I did get my hopes up a bit, but especially with how the ferris wheel scene went and the breadcrumbs backstory about his dad through the Eggs part. I thought maybe he was somewhere on the ace spectrum too, or just genuinely wanted to be with Natsu, or that he wanted a kid as he admired his own father so mucb, and realised he liked fatherhood. Either way, it felt like the whole thing was gearing up to something, anything. And then suddenly it’s like "oh yeah, he’s not going to be involved" and that’s it, "he can be there if he wants" ok, anything else? "I'm going to raise them on my own." Sure... that was already clear... So no. nothing else. That's it. No more comments. 
It felt rushed, like Kawakami couldn't decide or didn’t want to deal with that thread anymore and just dropped it.

Still, I really liked the book. Everything else was solid. And I love seeing feminism from a non-Western perspective, it hits totally different.