I am familiar with many literatures out of my geographical and cultural comfort zone, but the Japanese literature is one of those that cannot cease to puzzle me. The more I read the more far I feel from a palpable understanding of the local cultural soul.
I´ve intellectually met Sayaka Murata through her short story Convenience Store Woman. Earthlings - translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori brings the discussion about what is normal and what is not from the social point of view to another level. A topic I have personally very conflicting thoughts about it. Although I may accept at a great extent the deconstruction of normality, even beyomd the power-focused interpretation in Foucault´s terms, I am relatively uncomfortable with the everyday interaction with not-normality on a daily, personal basis.
´I was used with Mom saying I was hopeless. And she was right, I really was a dead loss. The rice I dished up just lay flat in the bowl instead of being nicely rounded´.
Natsuki believes she is from Planet Popinpobopia belonging to the Magic Police sent to Save the Earth. Her stuffed animal, Piyyut - see the cover - gives her magical powers. Many kids do this at a certain extent, with their imaginary friends and hopes that their stuffed animals can talk or help them when the world of adults fails them. But Natsuki keeps the same mindframe at an older age too, after being faced with an utter cruelty from her mom and killing a teacher that abused her sexually. Her escape from the Baby Factory town and mindset was to marry a man who, similarly to her, was looking to escape the social pressure. Their arrangement was to keep their separate lives while maintaining a marriage of conivence, where sexual contact was out of question. The intrusive society does not help them and they have to run away or submit and either behave properly - get a job and keep it, make children - or part ways. They run to Natsuki´s grandparents house, to join her cousin - once childhood ´husband´ Yuu, initially an alien soul too, who remained skeptical about his condition. Once becoming aware of their alien condition, the three of them are sliding into an abysmal return to their normality. Which, in Earthling´s terms means more than perfect foolishness. I´ve felt I am in a narrative deem of Peter Greenway´s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife&Her Lover. A delirious tremens...
This matter-of-factly approach of abnormality, in the vein of ´when there are no rules everything is possible to survive´/´homo homini lupus´ kind of approach, is shocking by its cruelty. In the same way that cruelty is a ´normal society´ normative. Its vital energy is used for survival only and this is probably why I am so crossed about many attributes of the characters as they are completely empty from the intellectual point of view. Intellectual life and culture too are man-made constructs indeed but they may offer sometimes a frame for discussion.
Earthlings is like no other Japanese book I´ve read before but I am not necessarily fond of. I would be interested though to read and find out more about the local, Japanese-centered discussion about the ideas shared in this book. As I said at the beginning, the more I read the more puzzled I am about Japan - even despite spending one full year there.
Rating: 3 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
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