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A review by ratgrrrl
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
CN. Child Abuse, Child Sexual Assault, Abusive Family, Incest, Cannibalism, Body Horror, Suicide, Suicidal Ideation (both in the book and discussing my own experience in this review)
This book!
I absolutely loved Convenience Store Woman and I am absolutely thrilled and creeped out beyond belief to see Murata's punk as fuck reprise of her themes of the nightmare factory that is our capitalist societies and the suffocating and abusive nature of cisheteronormative patrichal values.
I totally understand why this book wouldn't be someone's cup of tea and this isn't a book I can just recommend to everyone without a caveat because of a lot of the very triggering content in this book and I do think it should absolutely come with content notes/ warnings, especially because of the cutesy cover and expectations readers may have because of Convenience Store Woman . HOWEVER, I do think that some of the responses to this book are absolutely ridiculous and show that we truly have a problem with art and literary literacy and understanding because something not being to your taste or potentially being triggering to you does not mean it is bad art.
Personally, I am not a fan of the genre 'extreme horror', which largely seems to be edge lords trying to be as gross and offensive seemingly for the sake of it, but I fully support people following their bliss or whatever, though I do wish it weren't so cisheteronormative and misogynistic. I don't consider this book to be in that category and genuinely believe that everything in this novel is considered and included with explicit purpose and artistic integrity. This doesn't mean you have to love it or want anything to do with it, but after watching Willow Talks Books reacting to one-star reviews of Earthlings (https://youtu.be/I63K0DYIhBY?si=KTBR0...) I feel I really wanted to make these points clearly.
Honestly, I thoroughly recommend Willow's review of Earthlings too [This video was recorded before her transition] (https://youtu.be/D4fAkmVcXh4?si=CMMhE...), which was exactly what I needed to ground me after I finished the book and felt so horrifyingly wired!
I'm not necessarily going into full spoilers and, honestly, this really is a book that truly has to be experienced to be believed, but I am going to talk about the plot and elements going forward, so avoid reading further if you don't want to know anything else.
Earthlings is the story of a young girl with an awful sister and mother, and a barely present father. She is emotional abused and denigrated by her family and she is sexually abused by one of her teachers. Everyone around her lets her down and turns away from her, even when she opens up about her abuse. She is a weird little girl who doesn't fit in and suffers all the more from the neglect and abuse that surrounds her.
While I never suffered sexual abuse as a child, I have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that became active alongside other chronic conditions and disabilities post viral after getting swine flu not long after I left university and moved back to my family home and my incredibly emotionally abusive, constantly denigrating, and neglectful family. I was a weird kid and was bullied an incredible amount at home and school throughout my time at school and was actively suicidal from the age of around 10, though it was not ever something my parents addressed or took seriously. I share all of this to say just how different this book hit me and how much I truly identified with Natsuki.
Natsuki only has her stuffed toy she believes is an alien for Popinpobia, Piyuut, and her cousin, Yuu, who is the only other person who understands her and is also a child of horrendous emotional abuse that leaves him feeling like he must be an alien. Their relationship is complicated by Natskuki's intense need to intimately connect with him, both out of a need to get inside his skin, a concept that comes up in other of Murata's stories in Life Ceremony, seemingly representing a desperate need to share a mind and body; experience with another human being (or Popopobian) due to the extreme isolation and loneliness of the individual experience of the single self, and the sexual abuse from her teacher that she feels is taking away and ruining her body. She wants to exer her own bodily autonomy and choose to share her body with someone she loves, before she loses it, despite the complications of her and Yuu being first cousins and children.
Unfortunately, the family catch the children in the act and react in the most extreme and unhelpful manner possibly, treating the children awfully and forceably separating them to the point in which they are never even mentioned again in the other's presence.
All of this trauma and rejecting the cisheteronormative gender roles and expectations leads Natsuki to have a very different adult life with a husband who seems to have had similar experiences and feelings towards society and the 'Factory' as they describe it. Natsuki believes she is an alien from Popinpobia and her husband is training himself to also be Popinpobian.
After the two go to stay at house where the families would gather each year for the Obon festival, the only time Natsuki and Yuu got to see each other each year, before they were separated, and they spend time with Yuu who is living there, Natsuki's husband starts to become fixated on acting in aberrant ways to break through his human conditioning and fully become an alien. The results of this cause a great deal more interferance and abuse from Natsuki and her husband's families, as they are being forced to conform and act in ways they do not wish with no respect or autonomy over their bodies.
This final indignity on top of a lifetime of trauma is the inciting incident in this book really entering the extreme and strange and disturbing climax of the novel in which Natsuki, her husband, and Yuu fully commit to being Popinpobians in what begins as a weird, wonderful, and liberating way of life that devolves into some of the gnarliest and disturbing things I've ever read.
This book is tremendously sad and depressing and disturbing, but it is also beautiful and brilliant and insightful. This is a transgressive and uncomfortable masterpiece in my opinion that takes the themes of the coercive nature of conformity and societal expectations and the abusive notions others have for us, especially those of us who are different or Queer in one way or another that Murata first presented so sweetly and efficiently in Convenience Store Woman, and elevates them to the extreme in a nightmare of body horror and punk pyrotechnics in Earthlings. It was one thing when the world was so stifling that a neurodivergent woman could only function within the order of a convenience store, but now we are shown just what callous and abusive monsters ordinary people become as tools of the Factory, her abusive family, teacher, and friends, and that the only way to truly break free from the Factory is to become something even more disturbing, strange, and monstrous.
There's nothing pretty or uplifting about the story this novel tells and that's because it is holding up a mirror to absolute hell world of late stage capitalism, regressive conservative politics, austerity, and alienation we are facing right now. These things being looming ever larger and doing more damage the more intersections of marginalisation you experience and the more you try to live outside or against it.
I don't know anything about Murata, but there is something so powerfully Queer about her writing, whether that is as a part of the LGBTQIA+ communities, neurodivergent or in any of the other various ways I consider myself Queer, that I truly feel a powerful connection and appreciation for her writing.
This book was something else and I am so very happy it exists.
This book!
I absolutely loved Convenience Store Woman and I am absolutely thrilled and creeped out beyond belief to see Murata's punk as fuck reprise of her themes of the nightmare factory that is our capitalist societies and the suffocating and abusive nature of cisheteronormative patrichal values.
I totally understand why this book wouldn't be someone's cup of tea and this isn't a book I can just recommend to everyone without a caveat because of a lot of the very triggering content in this book and I do think it should absolutely come with content notes/ warnings, especially because of the cutesy cover and expectations readers may have because of Convenience Store Woman . HOWEVER, I do think that some of the responses to this book are absolutely ridiculous and show that we truly have a problem with art and literary literacy and understanding because something not being to your taste or potentially being triggering to you does not mean it is bad art.
Personally, I am not a fan of the genre 'extreme horror', which largely seems to be edge lords trying to be as gross and offensive seemingly for the sake of it, but I fully support people following their bliss or whatever, though I do wish it weren't so cisheteronormative and misogynistic. I don't consider this book to be in that category and genuinely believe that everything in this novel is considered and included with explicit purpose and artistic integrity. This doesn't mean you have to love it or want anything to do with it, but after watching Willow Talks Books reacting to one-star reviews of Earthlings (https://youtu.be/I63K0DYIhBY?si=KTBR0...) I feel I really wanted to make these points clearly.
Honestly, I thoroughly recommend Willow's review of Earthlings too [This video was recorded before her transition] (https://youtu.be/D4fAkmVcXh4?si=CMMhE...), which was exactly what I needed to ground me after I finished the book and felt so horrifyingly wired!
I'm not necessarily going into full spoilers and, honestly, this really is a book that truly has to be experienced to be believed, but I am going to talk about the plot and elements going forward, so avoid reading further if you don't want to know anything else.
Earthlings is the story of a young girl with an awful sister and mother, and a barely present father. She is emotional abused and denigrated by her family and she is sexually abused by one of her teachers. Everyone around her lets her down and turns away from her, even when she opens up about her abuse. She is a weird little girl who doesn't fit in and suffers all the more from the neglect and abuse that surrounds her.
While I never suffered sexual abuse as a child, I have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that became active alongside other chronic conditions and disabilities post viral after getting swine flu not long after I left university and moved back to my family home and my incredibly emotionally abusive, constantly denigrating, and neglectful family. I was a weird kid and was bullied an incredible amount at home and school throughout my time at school and was actively suicidal from the age of around 10, though it was not ever something my parents addressed or took seriously. I share all of this to say just how different this book hit me and how much I truly identified with Natsuki.
Natsuki only has her stuffed toy she believes is an alien for Popinpobia, Piyuut, and her cousin, Yuu, who is the only other person who understands her and is also a child of horrendous emotional abuse that leaves him feeling like he must be an alien. Their relationship is complicated by Natskuki's intense need to intimately connect with him, both out of a need to get inside his skin, a concept that comes up in other of Murata's stories in Life Ceremony, seemingly representing a desperate need to share a mind and body; experience with another human being (or Popopobian) due to the extreme isolation and loneliness of the individual experience of the single self, and the sexual abuse from her teacher that she feels is taking away and ruining her body. She wants to exer her own bodily autonomy and choose to share her body with someone she loves, before she loses it, despite the complications of her and Yuu being first cousins and children.
Unfortunately, the family catch the children in the act and react in the most extreme and unhelpful manner possibly, treating the children awfully and forceably separating them to the point in which they are never even mentioned again in the other's presence.
All of this trauma and rejecting the cisheteronormative gender roles and expectations leads Natsuki to have a very different adult life with a husband who seems to have had similar experiences and feelings towards society and the 'Factory' as they describe it. Natsuki believes she is an alien from Popinpobia and her husband is training himself to also be Popinpobian.
After the two go to stay at house where the families would gather each year for the Obon festival, the only time Natsuki and Yuu got to see each other each year, before they were separated, and they spend time with Yuu who is living there, Natsuki's husband starts to become fixated on acting in aberrant ways to break through his human conditioning and fully become an alien. The results of this cause a great deal more interferance and abuse from Natsuki and her husband's families, as they are being forced to conform and act in ways they do not wish with no respect or autonomy over their bodies.
This final indignity on top of a lifetime of trauma is the inciting incident in this book really entering the extreme and strange and disturbing climax of the novel in which Natsuki, her husband, and Yuu fully commit to being Popinpobians in what begins as a weird, wonderful, and liberating way of life that devolves into some of the gnarliest and disturbing things I've ever read.
This book is tremendously sad and depressing and disturbing, but it is also beautiful and brilliant and insightful. This is a transgressive and uncomfortable masterpiece in my opinion that takes the themes of the coercive nature of conformity and societal expectations and the abusive notions others have for us, especially those of us who are different or Queer in one way or another that Murata first presented so sweetly and efficiently in Convenience Store Woman, and elevates them to the extreme in a nightmare of body horror and punk pyrotechnics in Earthlings. It was one thing when the world was so stifling that a neurodivergent woman could only function within the order of a convenience store, but now we are shown just what callous and abusive monsters ordinary people become as tools of the Factory, her abusive family, teacher, and friends, and that the only way to truly break free from the Factory is to become something even more disturbing, strange, and monstrous.
There's nothing pretty or uplifting about the story this novel tells and that's because it is holding up a mirror to absolute hell world of late stage capitalism, regressive conservative politics, austerity, and alienation we are facing right now. These things being looming ever larger and doing more damage the more intersections of marginalisation you experience and the more you try to live outside or against it.
I don't know anything about Murata, but there is something so powerfully Queer about her writing, whether that is as a part of the LGBTQIA+ communities, neurodivergent or in any of the other various ways I consider myself Queer, that I truly feel a powerful connection and appreciation for her writing.
This book was something else and I am so very happy it exists.
***
I just finished. Holy. Shit. What. The. Actual. Fuck. Wow. What. Help. Aaaaaaaaaah!
I loved it!
But aaaaaaagh!
I need time to process.
I just finished. Holy. Shit. What. The. Actual. Fuck. Wow. What. Help. Aaaaaaaaaah!
I loved it!
But aaaaaaagh!
I need time to process.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, and Cannibalism