I really enjoyed Sayaka Murata’s earlier book Convenience Store Woman. The collection of short stories in Life Ceremony continues down the quirky path set by Convenience Store Woman, but I feel like it jumped almost too far into an uncomfortable and awkward place, although I was left with the impression that this is an issue with me and that the author was being true to herself and her writing throughout.
I’m really struggling to say whether or not I enjoyed these stories or not. They definitely gave off a creepy, skin-crawling vibe, but several of them were memorable. Set in the future, these stories examine a world in what appears to be a death spiral, seemingly devoid of humanity as we define it today. Between a future of wearing clothing and using furniture that is made completely out of body parts of the dead, cannibalism and copulation as a mourning ritual for a society with rapidly falling population numbers, women being rewarded for being incubators and turning their babies over to the government to raise, and people being kept as pets by others, Life Ceremony is Brave New World for a modern audience.
This book is really like nothing I’ve read before, and while saying this book was enjoyable would be inaccurate (especially since I’m not sure a book like this really is meant to be “enjoyed” in that way,) it was provocative and thought-provoking about the direction society is going. And I’m not saying that I believe that cannibalism for food and furniture is our future, but the feeling of society going down a rabbit hole that it can’t climb out of definitely makes you think.
Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.