This book was like a fever dream. There were points in this book where my mouth was literally agape because of the things happening in it, there were points where I found myself nodding my head in agreement but at the end of it, I don’t know what to think of it.

Let me start of by saying that this book has trigger warnings for pretty much everything possible: child abuse, sexual abuse, incest, gaslighting, murder, cannibalism.

The book starts off with the perspective of Natsuki (who is the main character in our story). She’s about eleven years old and she has a friend (her stuffed toy) who she thinks is an alien. Her cousin, Yuu, also says he’s an alien and thus begins a journey where we see a lot of things happening from her being eleven to her marrying Tomoya and living a marriage of convenience. I do not wish to say much to spoil what happens, so I’ll stop there.

What I did take from this book is that the author has some interesting stances on society and the way we live. The society is ‘The Factory’ in the book. They think that a man and a woman should get married and behave like tools for The Factory to create more tools aka children. When there are people who don’t wish to do this, they are ostracized and criticized. Which is why the 3 characters truly believe that they are ‘aliens’ from another planet and are not like ‘the Earthlings’. They’re breaking away from the mold that society is trying to put them in.

The writing is actually quite great because I feel that great writing is when it can bring out emotion in you, whether good or bad and this book definitely did that. I liked the characterizations of the people in the book. In the beginning you might not understand why a person is behaving like so, but as the book moves on, you try to understand. I do think however, that the author painted people either black or white and there wasn’t much room for grey.

If you are a fan of ‘weird books’ that are definitely smart, then this book is for you. I appreciated the book and what it tried to say but there were parts of it that I just couldn’t digest and hence, gave it a 3.5 star. But hey, that could just be ‘The Earthling’ in me.

Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for sharing this ARC with me in exchange for my honest review.

Well, that was absolutely disturbing. Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse(verbal, physical, and sexual), Cannibalism, and Incest.

I went into this thinking it would a quirky fast read. While I did make it through this book quickly, quirky is by no means a word I would use to describe Earthlings. This book is dark and tragic and strange. I wanted to know the story, but also wanted to get out of the world Murata weaved as quickly as possible. Earthlings is not for the faint of heart, but if you are looking for something distressing and engulfing this will scratch that itch.

TW: Sexual assault, child abuse, incest, cannibalism.
3,5 Stars

Earthlings is probably the hardest book I’ve ever had to review. I do think the book is smart but because of some topics and scenes, it was hard and sometimes weird to read it. It’s the first book I’ve read by Sayaka Murata, I didn’t have the chance to read Convenience Store Woman yet but from what I’ve read, the atmosphere of the two are completely different. So, I picked Earthlings with no preconception about the author or her writing style.

Earthlings is divided into two different time period; the beginning of the book is focused on Natsuki’s childhood while the rest is on her adulthood (with a few flashbacks to her childhood).

I found Natsuki as a character really interesting because she seemed to feel really disconnected from what is expected from a woman, especially in Japanese society: first getting married and soon after starting to have children. She refers to her town as “a collection of nests, a factory for manufacturing babies”, her husband will also call the society they live in “the baby factory” as if the sole purpose of human being was to create life. I think it highlights the pressure put on woman to have kids once they are married. Wanting to be a mother is foreign concept to her, she doesn’t seem to understand it, but as a child, she is, nonetheless, trying to work hard to become part of that society by working hard in order to do well in at school. Natsuki’s sister is actually the perfect example of what a Japanese woman is supposed to be, married with a child even though she is not happy in her marriage (we will learn that she is having an affair later on in the book).

I was really confused about Natsuki’s “magical powers” at first until it became clearer as the story progress. Magical powers are used as a way to survive from her mom’s emotional and physical abuse and her teacher Mr Isagaki’s sexual’s abuse. “I have to use my magical powers on my whole body before my heart feels anything”. The magical powers as a way to protect herself from the pain, from feeling too much and break down. She even tells her mom about Igasaki’s abuse, but her mom is blaming her instead, which, unfortunately, is a situation a lot of victims of abuse do face. I found the scenes depicting Isagaki’s abuse even harder to read because they were told from the point of view of a kid.

Therefore, I won’t recommend this book to everyone because of the topics and some scenes that I found hard to read. The book can seem a little bit confusing, but I really like how Murata was condemning Japanese society through Natsuki’s character.

I admit that I was absolutely obsessed with "Convenience Store Woman" and read it instead of studying for my grad school exams. So when Sayaka Murata published another book, you better believe I NEEDED TO get my hands on it.

In many ways, "Earthlings" is very similar of Murata's first novel in English: simple writing style with attention to sensory details and memories, the main heroine as an outcast living in her own world, and the exploration of what it means fit into a society as a 'normal' person. However, "Earthlings" stands out as much more difficult and absolutely heartbreaking.

Meet Natsuki. On the surface, she is a normal, shy girl. But deep inside, Natsuki knows she doesn't fit in; she is convinced that she's an alien from another planet, desperately trying to be human. But her feelings of inadequacy are exacerbated, or rather caused, by gross abuse in multiple spheres of her young life.

Murata's new novel is strange and fascinating. It transports you to a faraway place, both because it's set in Japan and because it explores a mind that is very different yet relatable. However, the subject matter can be a trigger to some, and is most certainly heartbreaking. "Earthlings" is guaranteed to stay in my thoughts for a long time.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Earthlings is the second of 10 books written by Japanese author Sayaka Murata to be translated into English. The first, Convenience Store Woman, was published in 2018 and became a bestseller. I have not read Convenience Store Woman, but after reading Earthlings I did some research to learn more about this author and her unique voice, and odd, but compelling story. I learned that critics and reviewers had a hard time describing and categorizing Convenience Store Woman- was it humor, dark humor, or horror? Was it charming, disturbing, weird, yet at the same time engaging and charming? Earthlings can be described similarly.

If you have not read Convenience Store Woman or Earthlings, be prepared. Earthlings is categorized on Amazon as Coming of Age Fiction. The beginning of the book does seem like a Coming of Age story. Natsuki is a preteen Japanese girl who tells her story in the first person. She does not connect with her family; her strongest attachment is to a plush toy hedgehog. At a family gathering at her grandparents, Natsuki and her boy cousin Yuu connect and they share that they are both aliens from another planet.

As Natsuki grows, the book jumps to her life over twenty years after her eventful summer with Yuu, we see that she continues to be an outsider, to her family and to society. She doesn’t want to be part of the Factory, which is how she views Japanese society. Is she mentally unbalanced? Is she suffering from PTSD? Or is she a keen observer of life and it’s rules and taboos?

Part love story, part horror, this is an unforgettable story. The writing is incredible; the author uses such simple words and phrases to create such complex thoughts and feelings. A book that is disturbing and readable, all at the same time.

I received an advance digital review copy from NetGalley and the publisher, Grove Press. This is my honest review.

Easily the most disturbing thing I have ever read, and I don't tend to shy away from disturbing novels.
I loved Convenience Store Woman so I was very excited to get an advanced reader copy of this.

This is MUCH darker than Convenience Store Woman, with the same themes of society and isolation. I am not sure that the same fans of that book will be on board for this journey.

Wow, I had to let this one sink for a while. Cannibalism, murder, incest—Sayaka Murata doesn't spare out one taboo topic in her newest novel 'Earthlings'. The plot of this short book though sounds very simple: A young girl (Natsuki) and her cousin (Yuu) don't feel at home with their families—or, planet Earth, that is. Due to a side comment by Yuu's mother, Yuu takes on to the belief that he is indeed an alien from another planet. Natsuki, who has a plush toy (a hedgehog) she believes to be from another planet as well, dives right into this and based on the children's naivety and make-believe, they truly believe this. But when the two children are discovered having sex, all hell break loose, the family is torn apart and Nariko and Yuu are forbidden to see each other again. This holds on until 20 years later, when they finally meet again.

Instead of having outgrown the ideas of the far away planet of Popinpobopia (yes, that's what's it's called), Natsuki held on to this thought her whole life. She didn't grow accustomed to the tight Japanese societal boundaries of the so-called 'Factory', e. g. caring for the family, getting on with a good job and raising children for a woman, and being cared by said woman and having a well-paid job for a man. To escape these limitations, Natsuki even married a guy just like herself, who doesn't want to get sucked into the'Factory' and adhere to this life plan handed out to every person on Earth. The 'Factory' is their paraphrase for the whole force that urges each human being, each 'Earthling', into giving their life for work, family and, as soon as appropiate, children.

When Natsuki and her husband try to escape this madness, they go for a vacation to the house where it all began. They meet Yuu, who seems to have shaken off the ideas from another planet—or at least, he has buried them deep under society's expectations of himself and his life choices. But when he delves into conversation with Natsuki, he gets engrossed in the idea of Earthlings and aliens again and the three of them travel to a dark place where there's no turning back...

Skillfully written, powerful and so engrossing that you have to keep reading until the last page is finished. This is a masterpiece follow-up to 'Convenience Store Woman', which is in contrast the exact opposite of 'Earthlings', while tackling basically the same topic—societal expecations and the way you life with or against them. I loved every page of this short novel and am looking forward to further novels from Sayaka Murate coming our way!

Wow. Just wow. This book is unlike anything I have read before. It was my first incursion into Murata's fiction and I was not disappointed.

Earthlings follows the story of Natsuki, a child with a very vivid imagination and a very elaborate internal world. She thinks she is an alien on a mission to save the world. Natsuki likes spending her summer holidays in her grandparents' home where every year she meets her cousin Yuu whom she is madly in love with. When a series of tragic events threaten to separate the two children forever, Natsuki is forced to reconsider the morality and values of the world she lives in.

This book does not shy away from anything. In her beautiful prose, Murata alternates descriptions of the orderly life in Japan with scenes of death, sexual abuse and even cannibalism. I was gripped from start to finish and I could not put this book down. Earthlings challenges the conventions that rule all our lives: work hard for the good of Society and have children who can, in turn, do the same. It may not be the newest of topics, but Murata certainly tackles it uniquely. Natsuko's personal journey reminded me of Yeong-hye's personal and physical deterioration in Hang Kang's The Vegetatian: both characters trying to defy societal norms by bringing to life their internal world in a very extreme way.

I have debated whether this book deserves 5 stars but I decided to settle to 4 for now. I loved ALL of it apart from the final 15/20 pages which became unnecessarily gory and did not add much to what Murata has been trying to say through this text for the previous 200 pages.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for providing an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Not so subtle critique of the patriarchal, misogynist side of Japanese society (easily transposable to Western society, btw), where society-driven depersonalisation leads to the creation of twisted, alien psychology.

The book tells the story of Natsuke, a young Japanese girl, who is convinced she is an alien from another planet, trying desperately to become an Earthling. Her mother is horrible to her, her sister is not much better. She has a teacher who everyone adores, who abuses her sexually. The only person she feels a real connection with is her cousin Yuu, who she sees once a year on vacation. Yuu also wonders if he is an Earthling or not. They get 'married', and Natsuke proposes they have sex (they are married after all). They get caught by their family, all hell breaks loose, and they never see eachother again.

There's a time jump, and Natsuke is now in her thirties. She sees society as the Factory, where she is supposed to become a baby maker. She deliberately has married a man who has no feelings for her, who doesn't want to have sex with her, just to get her family off her back.

From here the book takes the analogies of the Factory, and the question of whether they're Earthlings or aliens, to their more or less logical conclusions. Which means a lot of extreme behaviour and gore, and it's all not very surprising. Maybe it's because I've grown up with a lot of Dutch culture, which always seems to go for extremes, but I'm at a point where a truly shocking twist is when characters don't go for the most extreme option.

One of the saddest and weirdest things I've read in a very long time. The third act of the book took a turn I was not expecting and wow--it was a shock, but kind of perfect after all that Natsuki had suffered at the hands of other people.

This book feels a lot like "Convenience Store Woman" by the same author but falls flat after a while. Natsuki feels as alienated as Keiko did but her personality is rather flat, just like her observations of the world are. People did not act nor feel like people do and the ending was rather unsettling. I did enjoy the first half of this story, but I could not empathize with anyone at all.

I like how the writing effectively portrays dissociation through the nearly emotionless narration. However, while I expected this to be dark, I was not quite prepared for the frequent explicit portrayals of child sexual abuse. It was definitely too much for me.

Hmm, I think I wavered on this one, there were parts that were better than others. I'm thinking some of the parts i had trouble with just came down to my lack of understanding the cultural references/situations in the book. I also felt very disconnected from the characters and therefore from the story.

This was fairly middle-of-the-road for me. I wasn't an enormous fan of 'Convenience Store Woman' but I certainly admired what it set out to do, and this is similar but I honestly think it failed a bit more than the prior book. I was interested in the premise and there were certainly some interesting themes that started up, but they didn't travel in what I thought was the right direction. The abuse and the idea of pervading childhood fantasies into adulthood are really strong conceptually, but they didn't hit the right notes here.

The characters were wildly unlikeable, which I did somewhat anticipate due to the way that Murata's prior book handled its characters, but I hoped that they could be a little more bearable. Thematically, and perhaps it's a matter of translation, perhaps not, but there was an issue with the carrying of ideas. I think that there could have been a lot more discourse about child abuse, parental disaffection, and ruined adulthood, but the book just didn't take that far enough.

It was still written well, however, and the story was still enough to keep me engaged and wanting to finish the book. I just wish that it could have taken it that bit further, and then I would have had it a lot higher on my list. I do hope Murata continues to write, however, and perhaps that social discourse will come a little bit more with time.

Earthlings starts as a story about two kids with a wild imagination spending summer at what seems like a lovely family gathering. Yuu and Natsuki promise each other to “Survive, whatever it takes.” This sentence seems innocent at first but gets a whole new meaning as the story progresses. Yuu goes along with everything Natsuki suggests, while Natsuki hides in her fantasies. Without the support of her family, she has no defense against the abuse she suffers.

She feels like she has to “Survive, whatever it takes”, like a proper Earthling and member of the baby-making Factory. Japanese authors sure like to compare their society to a factory (Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory comes to mind). The burden to live up to society’s expectations is a central theme in Earthlings. How does one escape from society and the watchful eye of family and friends? By going back to the basics…

A small word of caution: Earthlings contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and young kids exploring sex and it doesn’t shy away from discussing incest and sex without consent. Things that are actually happening in society but are often considered not an acceptable topic in fiction. If you don’t want to come across scenes like that, then you shouldn’t read this book.

Through these scenes, Sayaka Murata indirectly discusses real issues in society; issues to which many turn a blind eye because they can’t imagine someone would do something like that. Toyama, Natsuki’s husband, seems like a caricature whenever he opens his mouth. At one point, Toyama’s comments had me laughing out loud before I reread the paragraph and once again realized that what he said was so not done. The absurdness can’t hide that he has no moral/ethical boundaries: as long as it is the opposite of what society stands for it feels right to him. He is the rebel, and like the others, he feels alienated from society.

I liked the scenes where Natsuki channeled her inner witch to deal with her problems (magic realism!) – which is totally the opposite of Yuu’s submissive way of dealing with his problems – and I think this book could have been a fairy tale or fable if the subject were different. What I liked less is the constant comparison of society with the Factory in both the thoughts of the characters and the dialogues. It could have been a bit less.

Half-way the book the story takes an interesting turn. I had not expected this at the beginning, so I was pleasantly surprised and it kept me on my toes as I was increasingly wondering where the characters would lead me next. The synopsis doesn’t give away what kind of book you are gonna read at all.

I really enjoyed reading this novel and the rich fantasies, entertaining dialogues, and messed up characters played a big role in that. At the same time, I was constantly aware of the seriousness of what the main characters had to deal with. Sayaka Murata manages to discuss a heavy topic in a light way without it feeling any less serious. Despite the topic, the book is easy to read. Compared to Murata’s earlier novel Convenience Store Woman, Earthlings has more spirit and emotion.

***Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC***

This book packs a wallop in so, so many ways that I both anticipated and did not. It addresses a plethora of taboo subjects, but in an often detached or matter-of-fact way that could make some readers uncomfortable. I think the tone made it all the more intriguing and surprising with each turn. The story starts with Natsuki, a little girl who doesn't seem to fit into her surroundings, including her immediate family. She experiences traumas but creates narratives around them that help her make sense of what is happening. She also relies on the once-per-year summer visit to her grandparents' remote home where she spends Obon with her extended family. Among them, there's Yuu, her similarly peculiar cousin. When they are caught together one morning, the extended family works to keep them apart.
Fast-forward and now Natsuki is a married adult, but her marriage is anything but traditional. She and her husband are similarly uninterested in being "normal" and this completely blows up into a hard-to-believe, yet utterly fascinating train wreck when they visit the old mountaintop home of Natsuki's grandparents, where Yuu happens to be residing. The reunion violently tumbles into the rest of the story, which unfurls at the pace of rollercoaster going downhill. It gets stranger and more excruciating, yet I couldn't tear my eyes away because I just had to know how far Murata would take it. Let's just say -- I'd never play a game of chicken with her. The book ends, but its hold on your mind remains. In fact, I think my head is still spinning...

Trigger warnings: Child sexual abuse, incest, murder (and worse)

At first, I thought that this book’s title would indicate a coping mechanism for the life the main character experiences (viewing herself as different from the rest of society’s expectations and the traumas that she encounters); however, the characters just keep devolving, which may be the author’s way of showing that people need to receive psychological counseling (versus figuring out a personal coping mechanism) to overcome problems and challenges in their lives. Personally, this title went too far for me, and I ended up not enjoying it, although I did finish it.

Murata has done it again, but this time it is stranger, thornier, and darker than before. Earthlings is a disturbing little tale that, as Stefon would say, has it all (sort of in the worst way): aliens, cannibalism, brainwashing, murder, incest, pedophilia. It is upsetting and challenging to read at time, but told by a narrator who is so compellingly strange that it creates distance from the horrific realities of her situation. I'm not sure the book would be readable otherwise. It feels like the narrator functions as a device more than a fully fleshed character. She is estranged from the world and in being so different, she highlights the strangeness of... normalcy. Her inability to comprehend expectations around marriage and procreation were fascinating. She views people following "traditional" trajectories as mysterious and brainwashed and illogical but also strangely enviable in their placid complicity. Murata is a master of using an oddball, harmlessly non-conformist central character to challenge our expectations of what success looks like. While I found the ending to be a bit... overkill, I still really enjoyed this book and the way it explored trauma, companionship, and independence.

I see how the author wanted to show the way women are seen as men's property, useless if not to make babies, and they aren't believed if they report an abuse, but this book was just too much, too unsettling, too dark. Some scenes will haunt me forever. If that was the goal, then, good. But still, nope, I didn't like this book at all. Disturbing to say the least.

Natsuki is clearly verbally and physically abused by her family, mostly mother and older sister. They were the worst, infuriating. If I was suppose to feel extra uncomfortable by the detailed scenes then work accomplished!

It had the usual peculiar dialogues I read in the author's other book, but here was so much more peculiar and pretty random. The book was short so easy to finish in an afternoon, but for my tastes it was just too much outside my comfort zone. Like way outside.

I had first experienced Murata’s work after reading Dwight Garner’s great review and Motoko Rich’s work in the New York Times and deciding to pick up Convenience Store Woman. It is a straight-faced, captivating story about a woman that develops a relationship with a co-worker in a crappy minimum wage job, and as a result of their affair, the circumstances of the novel come to fruition. It reminded me of any number of Manga-plot devices that lead to missed opportunities, confused emotional navigation, and a whole lot of ennui. I got what I expected, and I loved what I read – totally driven by Garner and Rich and my own obsession with the culture and climate described in the novel. I was satisfied. But there was something about this new novel that grabbed my attention. Once authors grab a foothold in foreign markets, they can test their more challenging work knowing they have an audience, and while I was plainly entertained by Convenience Store Woman, I was blown away when I received an early Advanced Reviewer's Copy of Earthlings from NetGalley

Earthlings treated me to a bizarre, ever-evolving blossom of messed up, bizarre infatuation. It may have started a genre in itself, giving rise to a new guard of Japanese Gothic Sci-fi Horror that leads the audience through a captivating story whose basis include the tropes of romance combined with the high strangeness of enthralling extra-terrestrial psychological horror. In short, I have never read a book like this in my life, and I was pulled in for the ride from the first moment.

The book begins with the story of two cousins, brought together in a mountainous region that all of their close-knit family visits for the summer. There is incestuous infatuation in the air once the cousins betroth one another in the spirit of summer love - an innocent marriage based on circumstance and ignorance. This string easily evokes a handful of V.C. Andrews tropes, but then the story winds down into a Lars VonTrier nightmare - an alleyway of horrors one can’t pull their eyes from. Around every corner of the story, I was introduced to another terrible, bizarre, captivating series of events accepted as the true reality and circumstances of the characters… and upon every turn, we are led to accept the terrible and bizarre fates of the characters we once accepted as members of “the factory” - the name given to what is acceptable and encouraged for our society of nuclear-family child-rearing.

I absolutely loved this novel, if only for the fact that I have never experienced anything like it save for perhaps my experiences watching VonTrier’s Antichrist and Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! It is an experience unlike anything in the modern written word, and I encourage everyone to pick up a copy of this bizarre, horrifying, exciting new novel that is unlike anything in recent memory. I was unable to put it down, and look forward to more translations that bring us down this terrifying sieve of eastern, alien darkness and bodily deconstruction.