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A review by marleyrollins
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
3.0
Didn’t like this anywhere near as much as Convenience Store Woman, even though it seemed like it would be way more up my street.
I found that people massively overhyped the transgressive and shocking elements of the book, and when they actually happened, I was just very meh about the whole thing.
I thought the way the author explored childhood trauma, consent and abuse, and repression interesting, but it felt like she was just throwing things in to be deliberately edgy and provocative, and I felt like the language wasn’t strong enough to carry a plot like that.
Overall, very lukewarm on this. I’ll definitely remember it, and I’ll probably never read anything like it ever again, but I don’t feel particularly moved by it, and it didn’t excite me that much.
Check it out if you’re into strange books, translated fiction, or transgressive fiction though. Obviously, Google the trigger warnings in advance, because it ticks pretty much all of them.
I found that people massively overhyped the transgressive and shocking elements of the book, and when they actually happened, I was just very meh about the whole thing.
I thought the way the author explored childhood trauma, consent and abuse, and repression interesting, but it felt like she was just throwing things in to be deliberately edgy and provocative, and I felt like the language wasn’t strong enough to carry a plot like that.
Overall, very lukewarm on this. I’ll definitely remember it, and I’ll probably never read anything like it ever again, but I don’t feel particularly moved by it, and it didn’t excite me that much.
Check it out if you’re into strange books, translated fiction, or transgressive fiction though. Obviously, Google the trigger warnings in advance, because it ticks pretty much all of them.