Earthlings
by Sayaka Murata
(translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)
A Review
Let me start with a disclaimer and a warning. I am a fan of Gothic and horror fiction. Admittedly, I tend to favour less gory stories,
but I do not consider myself a squeamish reader. Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings, which is
being published by Granta Books in a translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is
no horror novel. Yet, there were several
instances when I felt like turning away from the book – disgusted and disturbed.
So what is this novel all about? The first chapters introduce us to 11-year
old Natsuki. A sensitive girl, she is
verbally abused by her mother and older sister, but things get markedly worse
when she is sexually exploited by one of her teachers. This paedophiliac abuse is explicitly
described in a revoltingly graphic scene which would probably be cut if this
book were a movie.
Natsuki has her survival mechanisms. She clings to Piyyut, a toy hedgehog which, she
imagines, is an alien from planet Popinpobopia who has come to Earth to give
her magical powers. Another source of
consolation is her family’s yearly visit to her grandparents’ house in a remote
mountain village, where her aunts, uncles and cousins converge for the festival
of Obon. Natsuki looks forward to her
meetings with her cousin Yuu with whom she shares her woes. Yuu is understanding, as he also has his own
problems, including a borderline-abusive relationship with his needy mother. For his mum, Yuu is an alien, and both
Natsuki and Yuu himself seem to accept this at face value.
Fast forward a couple of decades and we find
Natsuki living in a chaste marriage of convenience with her husband Tomoya. Both Natsuki and Tomoya settle for this peculiar
arrangement in order to escape the strictures of what they call “the Factory”. The “Factory” refers to conventional Japanese society with its strict
mores and pressures, especially on females to marry and have children. When Tomoya learns of Natsuki and Yuu’s
childhood ‘alien’ fantasies, he embraces them with a naïve enthusiasm. Soon,
Tomoya, Natuski and Yuu team up to create their own ‘alien commune’ in the
mountain home of Natsuki’s grandparents.
As they struggle to defiantly assert their own moral code, things get
increasingly weird and surreal.
At its best, Earthlings is a darkly
funny satire about society in general, and Japanese mores in particular. For instance, there’s a wickedly funny scene
where the hapless would-be rebel Tomoya, eager to “make a statement”, visits
his brother to propose an incestuous relationship, provoking a hilarious overreaction
from the rest of the family. On the strength of such scenes, Earthlings would
have worked brilliantly as a black comedy.
More often than not, however, the novel comes across as merely gratuitous.
The fact is that for all its contemporary feel,
what Murata is trying to do is not particularly new. The idea of the individual who takes on the
rigid moral code of bourgeois society by breaking its taboos was a recurring
one in the Romantic era. Goethe’s Young Werther, fictional rock
star of his age, is just one of many examples.
Looking at the literature of my country, Malta, this was also a theme
dear to the modernist authors of the Sixties, whose novels often featured
rebellious youths ostracized in a conservatively religious country. A case in point is Frans Sammut’s Samuraj
a novel inspired by Japanese traditions.
Samwel, the novel’s main character, struggles against what he feels are
the stifling confines of a traditional, rural Mediterranean village, performing
a hara-kiri in the final pages in homage to an “alien” culture at odds with
local mores.
The problem Murata faces is that in our permissive times, very few taboos remain (at least in literature), and the few
which are still considered “taboos” generally have good reason for being
such. To jolt a jaded modern reader,
Murata has to try hard. Perhaps too hard
for my tastes.
Hardcover, UK edition, 256 pages
Expected publication: October 1st 2020 by Granta Books
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