'Earthlings' by Sayaka Murata is a dark and disturbing novel that follows the life of Natsuki, a young girl who faces abuse and neglect from her family. The story unfolds as Natsuki forms a unique bond with her cousin Yuu during their annual visits to their grandparents' house. The narrative explores themes of trauma, nonconformity, and survival, taking readers on a journey from Natsuki's troubled childhood to her unconventional adulthood. Murata's writing style is described as delirious and surreal, with a focus on societal pressures, alienation, and the extreme coping mechanisms adopted by the characters.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings for Earthlings include child abuse, sexual abuse, incest, cannibalism, and graphic violence.
From The Publisher:
From the beloved author of cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, which has now sold more than one million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages, comes a spellbinding and otherworldly novel about a woman who believes she is an alien
Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman was one of the most unusual and refreshing bestsellers of recent years, depicting the life of a thirty-six-year-old clerk in a Tokyo convenience store. Now, in Earthlings, Sayaka Murata pushes at the boundaries of our ideas of social conformity in this brilliantly imaginative, intense, and absolutely unforgettable novel.
As a child, Natsuki doesn't fit in with her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut, who talks to her. He tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. One summer, on vacation with her family and her cousin Yuu in her grandparents' ramshackle wooden house in the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki decides that she must be an alien, which would explain why she can't seem to fit in like everyone else. Later, as a grown woman, living a quiet life with her asexual husband, Natsuki is still pursued by dark shadows from her childhood, and decides to flee the "baby factory" of society for good, searching for answers about the vast and frightening mysteries of the universe-answers only Natsuki has the power to uncover.
Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world, and cements Sayaka Murata's status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe.
Ratings (87)
Incredible (18) | |
Loved It (27) | |
Liked It (21) | |
It Was OK (12) | |
Did Not Like (4) | |
Hated It (5) |
Reader Stats (263):
Read It (88) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (147) | |
Did Not Finish (1) | |
Not Interested (26) |
7 comment(s)
İlk yorumumu bu kitap için yapmak istedim çünkü çevreme nasıl bir kitap okudun derlerse vereceğim cevaptan korkup beni akıl hastanesine kapatma ihtimalleri var.
Ben ne okudum diye soruyorum hala.
Sürükleyici ve her sayfasında ayrı bir şok yaşattı.
I was somewhat prepared that it was going to be an heavy emotional book and not just odd and diffrent. But it was still tough Togo trough and there where moments I got very uncomfortable. But I liked the story still and very much enjoy Sayaka Murata's writhing. I wanted to read this book as I e been enjoying and looking for more literature that is a bit weird and strange but still talks about topics well and is slightly unhinged. But I wold warn others that it deals a lot with sexual trauma.
Nothing could have prepared me for this book. It's singularly heart-wrenching, tragic, hilarious and horrifying, somehow all at once. I look forward to whatever twisted misunderstood characters Murata may share with us in the future.
what the sigma
4*
RTC
really dark, twisted and confusing. the beginning of the book is mainly abuse and the end is hard to understand or know if it is real
this book basically asks 'why do we have social mores and what would happen if we didn't - and do these taboos/mores make us human'. basically this book fucked me up deeply LOL
What can you read after
Earthlings?
About the Author:
Sayaka Murata is the author of many books, including Convenience Store Woman, winner of the Akutagawa Prize. Murata has been named a Freeman's "Future of New Writing" author, and a Vogue Japan Woman of the Year.Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated works by more than a dozen Japanese writers, including Ryu Murakami. She lives at the foot of a mountain in Eastern Japan.
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