I didn’t enjoy the book but I did appreciate the thought-provoking quality of the stories, which deliberately confront social taboos and feature characters who are not afraid to be different. The stand-out story for me was ‘A First-Rate Material’, which opens the collection. Unfortunately most of the stories were either too rambling, had weak endings or repetitive writing.

If you loved Earthlings, or if you didn’t love it but was intrigued by its shock factor, I suggest you pick up this book. I just found it too much of a mixed bag.

First published in Japan in 2019 as Seimeishiki. The English edition was translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

Thank you to the publisher Granta for the advance copy via NetGalley. The book will be published on 14th July.

The story begins like a Studio Ghibli animation, with a girl named Natsuko driving with her family to a curious house in the mountains where they will celebrate the Obon festival. Natsuko doesn’t fit in and is always being criticised. She pretends that she’s an alien waiting for her spaceship home.

Then things get creepy and gross. There is pretty much every trigger warning you could think of. I was laughing incredulously by the end because every taboo was stuffed into this book. I recognise what the author was doing, however, expanding upon the themes of Convenience Store Woman to explore what happens when society tries to force people – women in particular – into roles they can’t or don’t wish to fulfil.

Some of the content was repetitive and not elegantly phrased, which made the writing style unappealing to me. I’m sure the translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori is well done, so the author must be the culprit. I didn’t like the book – I wasn’t expecting to – yet I will always remember it and certainly the story is thought-provoking. I wonder where Sayaka Murata will go from here? It would be quite a feat to write a book more shocking than this one.

First published in Japanese as Chikyu Seijin in 2018. English edition published in 2020.

I found this an odd kind of book. It’s eccentric in its focus on the convenience store and is in turn amusing, sad, irritating and thought-provoking. Keiko guides the reader through her role at the store, her excellent customer service, her dedication to the job. She sees herself as a cog in a machine, but unlike some people, she takes pride in this. There is a dark undercurrent to the narrative, a dangerous side to Keiko’s nature which appears to be kept in check by the routine of her job. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, as it doesn’t factor in the ending. I was waiting for something dreadful to occur. I think this book is more about concepts than plot.

At 163 pages this is a short novel (I completed it in a day). This is certainly a strength because the story manages to be memorable and yet leaves questions unanswered – which are guarantees that I’d still be thinking about it for days to come. One of the ideas that made me think was about individuality. We absorb and reflect each other’s mannerisms and preferences. We do this to ‘fit in’, to escape the unspoken fear that we are all identical and easily replaced… like workers in a convenience store.

This book was first published in 2016 as Konbini ningen. The 2018 English translation is by Ginny Tapley Takemori.