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 … Read More “Life Ceremony: Stories by Sayaka Murata” »
Category: Short Stories
I’ve been struggling getting into short story collections lately — but this one was wonderful and reminded me what I really enjoy about reading short stories. This was a collection of stories that shows the lives of seemingly ordinary people from modern-day China. Really, though, in many of the stories, the characters are so normal, so relatable, you almost forget that they are set within the context of being governed by an authoritarian government until … Read More “Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen” »
I really struggled to rate this book. While I really liked this author’s writing — it was almost hypnotic in its poetry — I didn’t find myself particularly drawn to many of the stories individually. I even read several more than once to try and get a deeper handle on what she was saying, but I fear many of these stories will not stay with me very long. I’m finding most of them difficult to … Read More “A House Is a Body by Shruti Swamy” »
I had high hopes for a book described as being a collection of “stories that swing a wrecking ball at our assumptions about women.” However, either my assumptions about women (as someone who identifies as a woman) are vastly different than the assumptions the rest of the general population makes or this is yet another book about the commodification of women. As short stories, some were interesting and had a Roald Dahl-esque quality. However, the … Read More “Women on Top by Michelle Miller” »