Earthlings

EARTHLINGS
Sayaka Murata
Granta

REVIWED BY JESSIE NEILSON

Sayaka Murata is best known outside of Japan for her highly-acclaimed 10th novel Convenience Store Woman.

Her latest work is characterised by quirky characters building their own insular world as they fend off becoming mere parts in a capitalist society. While the story takes the path of a fairy tale, the writing stays matter of fact, as if describing everyday occurrences, as indeed they are for the narrator herself.

\Eleven-year-old Natsuki has a vivid imagination, with her best friend a plush hedgehog toy in appearance, called Piyyut. However, according to her, Piyyut is actually an emissary from Planet Popinpobopia, and he is here on a mission to save doomed Earth. Natsuki likewise has magical powers, for she is a protectress, a magician, with an origami magic wand and a magical transformation mirror forever near her person. Otherwise appearing as a normal school girl, Natsuki keeps to herself and her fantasy world.

She is waiting for the spaceship to arrive to return her to Popinpobopia. In the meantime she and her family must endure each other. Natsuki, her sister Kise, and their parents are navigating a windy, carsickness-inducing forested road for their yearly family meet.

It is the annual Obon festival where ancestors are honoured. The conglomerate is so extensive that for Natsuki and her cousins the ambiguous adults all blend into each other. The one cousin who she always longs to meet though is cousin Yuu, as they share a world view. He is an alien, also longing to return to his planet.

As the real world becomes more horrendous, her faith in the imaginary strengthens, and she holds out for yearly liaisons with Yuu. However, when lines are crudely crossed, it is Natsuki against the hostile world. Her mother uses her as an emotional dumpster, while ignoring other abuse that is going on outside the family unit. Natsuki decides once and for all that the conventional world is not for her. She views her town as a vast factory for the production of human babies, her womb a factory component.

Earthlings switches between a naive childhood suddenly brought to an end and her unusual philosophy put into practice as an adult. Like a lot of Japanese fiction it is grounded in realism before being overtaken by bizarre flights of fancy. The main character is young and sympathetic and determined to make her own eccentric choices, which in part come from adolescent trauma. These incidents she recounts in a deadpan fashion.

For fans of Haruki Murakami and Mieko Kawakami, this will definitely be a welcomed, fun, and whimsical addition.

Jessie Neilson is a University of Otago library assistant