Breasts and Eggs

No cover — Breasts and Eggs (AudiobookFormat, 2020, QUEST)

Audiobook

Published Aug. 19, 2020 by QUEST.

ISBN:: 978-1-004-01022-6

(1 review)

On a hot summer's day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother's self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsu's rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another. Ten years later, we meet Natsu again. She is now a writer and finds herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family's past as she faces her own uncertain future.

In Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami paints a radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working class womanhood …

On a hot summer's day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother's self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsu's rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another. Ten years later, we meet Natsu again. She is now a writer and finds herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family's past as she faces her own uncertain future.

In Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami paints a radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working class womanhood in Japan, recounting the heartbreaking journeys of three women in a society where the odds are stacked against them. This is an unforgettable full length English language debut from a major new international talent.

10 editions

kab reviewed Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

3 stars

I appreciate that female friendships and fulfilment without a romantic relationship are themes in the author's work. Writing about poverty and classism from the opening chapter also boded well, but in the end I was disconnected from every one of the characters' thought processes and motivations. Disengaging scenes included the later-unreflected-upon policing of gender when the protagonist is trying to work up the nerve to tell someone off for being in the women's section of a bathhouse, and when the protagonist speaks during the Q&A after a donor conception meeting and her argument degenerates and she lands on talking about parents murdering their own children. More than one character rants about inflicting life on people who never asked to be born and it teeters near ableist ideas of what lives are worth living. Natsuko concludes that Yuriko and Sengawa were right, and instead of standing up for herself, her decision …

I appreciate that female friendships and fulfilment without a romantic relationship are themes in the author's work. Writing about poverty and classism from the opening chapter also boded well, but in the end I was disconnected from every one of the characters' thought processes and motivations. Disengaging scenes included the later-unreflected-upon policing of gender when the protagonist is trying to work up the nerve to tell someone off for being in the women's section of a bathhouse, and when the protagonist speaks during the Q&A after a donor conception meeting and her argument degenerates and she lands on talking about parents murdering their own children. More than one character rants about inflicting life on people who never asked to be born and it teeters near ableist ideas of what lives are worth living. Natsuko concludes that Yuriko and Sengawa were right, and instead of standing up for herself, her decision is more about stubbornness and the readiness to fail. On top of already being at a remove from the story, there were prominent translation errors throughout that kept taking me out of it.

Subjects

Fiction, family life
Japan, fiction
Fiction, women