From the beloved author of cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, which has now sold more than a million copies worldwide, comes a spellbinding and otherworldly novel about a young girl who believes she is an alien
As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from … come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. Each summer, Natsuki counts down the days until her family drives into the mountains of Nagano to visit her grandparents in their wooden house in the forest, a place that couldn’t be more different from her grey commuter town. One summer, her cousin Yuu confides to Natsuki that he is an extraterrestrial, and that every night he searches the sky for the spaceship that might take him back to his home planet. Natsuki wonders if she might be an alien too. Back in her city home, Natsuki is scolded or ignored, and even preyed upon by a young teacher at her cram school. As she grows up in a hostile, violent world, she consoles herself with memories of her time with Yuu and discovers a surprisingly potent inner power. Natsuki seems forced to fit in to a society she deems a “baby factory” but even as a married woman she wonders if there is more to this world than the mundane reality everyone else seems to accept. The answers are out there, and Natsuki has the power to find them.
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.
more
Earthlings: A Novel by Sayaka Murata is Brilliant. Disturbing. Unforgettable.
Natsuki the main character initially offers the reader a voice of innocence, and then she imbues a layer of darkness and shadow, as she explains to you that ‘she is from another planet and wants to allow her family to exist without her.’
It’s easy to relate to the unfairness and sadness a life held at arm’s length can do to a child’s mind, especially when they create a fictional world based off of the premise that they are alien, and in order to survive they must give up happiness and hope to become an Earthling and a ‘Factory Component.’
When abuse of a much different kind arrives, Natsuki drifts further away from her body to survive sexual assault and to compartmentalize.
Yuu, Natsuki’s cousin is also a dreamer and loner, open to the idea that he could also be from the same cosmic origins as Natsuki. They are sweet and quite wonderful until something private happens between them and they become pariahs.
It would explain so much if we all could say we are alien when our family doesn’t attempt to understand, protect or to know us. I was drawn to the logical ideal, as human needs, love and feelings were eschewed and became non-essential for the future.
The childhood moments spent in the mountains were a beautiful memory, perhaps to illuminate that there are two sides to all things? Duality even in the cruelest of situations?
What strikes me about this novel is the soft lull, then the sharpness below the text with deep exploration of social structure that never changes or learns from the past, the patriarchy, as in a woman’s dismal fate to be groomed to perfection only to procreate and appease the needs of others. Humans who are like zombies spending every moment of their waking lives only to serve the machine and to repeat the cycle again, and again like the silkworms.
This story does not force you to accept any of these ideas or to agree with them. Instead these opinions and rebellious feelings drift and flow in a way that they seep into your pores and into your dreams.
The ending was startling, violent and graphic.
If the novel had been written any differently, I may have perceived this end as a commercialized plot twist meant to wake me up and to feel a deep seated dread or to shock me to my core.
Truly it did both, but what I was left with was a pensive assurance that this author sees beyond societal masks and far beyond the obvious––in a world packed full of factory components.
I have already recommended this brilliant novel to a few of my friends.
Many thanks to Grove Press, Netgalley and the author Ms. Murata for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.
I can always count on Sayaka Murata to completely surprise me. She has such an unconventional way of looking at the world that I can never tell where her stories are going to take me next. Her latest novel, Earthlings, is centred around a young girl named Natsuki, who uses her vivid imagination to escape the cruelty and abuse of her daily life and refashion herself as someone powerful and important. No one seems to understand her but her beloved cousin, Yuu, and when a terrible event pulls them apart, they vow to always survive no matter what. Years later, Natsuki is still living a life that perplexes those around her by maintaining a sexless marriage and refusing to consider becoming pregnant. When the pressure causes her to flee to the countryside and reunite with Yuu, a series of completely fucking bananas events are triggered that upends the lives of everyone around them. Wherever you think this book might be going, you are totally wrong. And yet in spite of the (I cannot stress this enough) bonkers ending, Murata has ultimately constructed a moving and psychologically realistic depiction of young people gripped by trauma and trapped in a box created for them by society, desperate to break out and yet desperate to belong. I devoured this in a day and would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoyed Murata’s previous book Convenience Store Woman (though be warned, Earthlings is much darker!).