Yikes.

What in the heck did I just read?

The jacket cover is technically correct, but hats off to the marketing folks that wrote the sales pitch, picked the cover quotes, piqued my interest, and got me to read this strange book. No, strange is not a strong enough word though. Bizarre? Odd? Whack?

Whatever ... it just wasn't good; I didn't like it. So many strange choices by the characters, misunderstandings, and topics that went way out into left field. I understand there are a LOT of cultural differences between the US and Japan, and that this was translated from Japanese so I added a star to the rating to account for those differences. But honestly this felt like a book about three people who need serious therapy.

I don't know what else to say. Just ... yikes. ( )

Don’t be fooled by the cute hamster on the front page, this was the most disorientating thing I’ve read in a long time. ( )

Edited to add: some great discussion of this book in the Newest Literary Fiction group (Dec 2020 group read) has helped me with the ending, which I can see now as a metaphor either for the self-destructive tendencies of trauma victims (pessimistic take) or for breaking down one’s dysfunctional beliefs/behavior patterns and being born-again, so to speak, with a new way of seeing your place in the world (optimistic take).
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Earthlings is a novel of abuse, alienation, and horror wrapped up in a deceivingly cute package. The whimsical tone is a stark contrast to the content which creates some interesting dissonance and some laugh-out-loud moments of black comedy sprinkled throughout the disturbing story (but there's still no excuse for the misleading blurb the book advertises itself with: "Immensely charming" says John Freeman from LitHub, er, no).

Natsuki is eleven years old at the novel's opening. She suffers constant degrading emotional abuse from her mother and sister and then sexual abuse from a popular teacher. She attempts to cope by imagining she has magical powers conferred onto her by a cute stuffed animal who is from another planet. Once a year at a family gathering she meets up with her cousin Yuu, who suffers abuse from his own mother and copes by imagining he is actually from another planet. They truly share a tragic fraternity, and the examination of their childhood experiences is excellent.

"Yuu, have you ever thought that your life doesn't belong to you?"

For a moment he couldn't get his words out, but then he said in a small voice, "Children's lives never belong to them. The grown-ups own us. If your mom abandons you, you won't be able to eat, and you can't go anywhere without help from a grown-up. It's the same for all children." He reached out a hand to cut a flower from the bed. "That's why we have to try hard to survive until we've grown up ourselves."

The novel then moves a couple of decades ahead and loses some of its power. Natsuki marries a man she meets online for convenience and a separate togetherness; both severely damaged people, they find a sympathetic friend in one another while struggling to deal with "the Factory", what they call family and society's rigid insistence on everyone becoming productive working and reproducing cogs in the machine:

Everyone believed in the Factory. Everyone was brainwashed by the Factory and did as they were told. They all used their reproductive organs for the Factory and did their jobs for the sake of the Factory. My husband and I were people they'd failed to brainwash, and anyone who remained unbrainwashed had to keep up the act in order to avoid being eliminated by the Factory.

This critique of adulthood in the novel has all the nuance and insight of an angsty teenager vowing never to be anything like their perfectly normal mom and dad, though I tend to think of Japanese society being considerably more heavy on the push to conformity than my own, so perhaps it bites harder for that.

Natuski's break with reality however is even more complete now than as a child, she has come to believe she is from an alien planet herself, and a horrifying scene of butchery and murder from her childhood that took place shortly after the novel jumped ahead in time explains her continued mental slide. Her husband comes to adopt her reality as well. They then meet with Yuu at the family's old gathering place, and while at first he's naturally skeptical of Natsuki's alternate reality she shares with him, his apparent dissatisfaction with life leads him to adopt their worldview, concluding in a final bizarre and surreal scene of human slaughter, cannibalism, and then mutual voluntary cannibalism as the three characters literally consume parts of each other's bodies that is difficult to make sense of. What Murata was going for with this ending, I'm not sure to be honest. Maybe it makes more sense in a Japanese cultural context?

The part of the novel focused on Natsuki's childhood I thought was excellent, the part focused on her adulthood I got less from, so I probably would have enjoyed this novel more if it had remained a story of childhood and powerlessness in a sometimes brutal world of adults. However, it is certainly memorable. ( )

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from the library.

Thoughts: This was a bizarre and (at times) uncomfortably violent/abusive read that I was not expecting. You just didn't know where this story was going and what was going to happen from page to page. I ended up finding that engaging and endearing despite (or maybe because) of the weirdness going on here. I was impressed with how many social issues were evaluated in the rather bizarre light of this story as well. Previous to reading this I had also read "Convenience Store Woman" and enjoyed that.

The story seems relatively simple to start. We follow Natsuki a young girl who doesn't fit in with her family and is convinced she can do magic spells. Aside from a plush toy named Piyyut (who Natsuki thinks is from the plant Popinpobopia) her only friend is her cousin Yuu. Yuu is convinced he is an alien from a different planet and is waiting for the spaceship to take him back to his home planet. The two get along wonderfully until the world intercedes and we are quickly shoved into Natsuki's abusive reality as she gets older. Natsuki eventually marries (via an app that helps couples who are looking for a "fake" marriage) and continues to evade what she sees as the "baby factory" of society. However, she thinks fondly of her summers spent with Yuu and eventually wants to return to the mountains of Nagano. When she does things get really wild.

What seems like a simple childhood story quickly dives into a story of the horrible abuse Natsuki faced as a girl both from her family and from a teacher. The whole story is told with a very matter of fact tone, that makes this abuse seem casual. The way the adults around Natsuki and even her friends write off this abuse as either her fault or just "something that happens" was incredibly disturbing.

The book is written in an almost childlike and simple tone throughout, which provides a stark contrast to what is happening in the story. The story shares some themes with "Convenience Store Woman" around people being forced to be something society wants. In this case Natsuki struggles with the fact that it seems like her whole society is a "baby factory" and that her only worth as a woman is to become a tool for society and make babies. She actually would like to be brainwashed by society but just can't stomach or be happy with the idea of doing that.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook is well done. Initially I thought the narration was a bit stiff sounding, but then realized that it really matches the simple and childlike tone of the book. If you listen to audiobooks this is a good one to listen to on audiobook.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I ended up enjoying this for all of its weirdness. I did find a lot of the abuse hard to stomach and this isn't something I would read a second time. However, this story definitely drives home the repercussions that can be seen by forcing everyone to fit into a certain societal mold. It's a pretty extreme and odd repercussion that really isn't all that believable. The unpredictability of the story drew me in though. I have enjoyed the two books I have read by Murate so far and will definitely keep an eye on her future books. Murate really cuts to the heart of some big societal issues in a way that is unexpected. ( )

What the fu…? This book is a wild ride.

I liked this book a great deal, but I'm pretty sure that I didn't get half of it. There are so many clever references to the experiences of Popinpobopian women everywhere. But, I knew that I was missing other satire because the experience wasn't translating between the factory of Japan and the factory here in the US. ( )