A review by anitamaxwin
The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

2.0

95 of the 115 pages of this feel like world building and introductory characterization. Around pg 95, things finally start to feel enticing beyond the standard, "Does my life have meaning at this job?" ramblings. The final page was actually the only page to really make me feel something, which was unexpected given the lack of overall thoughts and feeling I had reading the rest. I like the structure quite a bit, but the characters...no! I swear half of what these 3 characters had to say were comments regarding people's weight. Fatphobia is rampant, so I guess it's not a stretch that if we plucked 3 people from the factory, they wouldn't all hate fat people. But to me it felt like the author maybe was letting her feelings come through a little too much here. With a short page count, and 3 characters sharing the spotlight, a lot of time was wasted on these characters making shitty observations that contributed nothing to the goal of the book which I guess is to highlight the backwards nature of capitalism in factories. Failed pretty hard at that.