A weird, unsettling read Vanishing World is the story of an AU Japan where ideas of the family unit have vastly changed.
I found this story to be a quick read that kept me engaged in that special kind of way that only Sayaka Murata can. I didn't love the ending but as a whole this was an incredibly intriguing read.
For a more indepth review please check out my spoiler free youtube review here:: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JCBzhxKXjk&t=310s

In exchange for an honest review, I was given this ARC. Unfortunately, I did not love this book. I’ve read other books by Murata that I enjoyed much more. I found the story to be repetitive and difficult to finish. The concept of the books dystopian setting is one of its only redeeming qualities. It’s not with a light heart that I give this review, it was a disappointing read.

Sayaka Murata writes some of the best and oddest books I've ever read. I highly encourage everyone who likes unusual stories to check out her other books, especially Earthlings. This book didn't disappoint.
Amane is unusual in her society because she is a result of her parents having sex, and all other babies are now created through artificial insemination. This leads to a lot of different changes in relationships, such as a different perception of romance and less of a need for sex. Without giving anything away, Amane goes to extremes while trying to understand her place in the world and what she wants.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.

A world in which sex between married couples has ended, and all children are born by artificial insemination.

Wow! I don’t think I will ever forget this book—one of the wildest, most entertaining reading experiences I have ever had. I was hooked from the first page. I think the less you know going in, the better. If you have enjoyed Murata’s other work, you will love this. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, prepare for things to get weird. I highly recommend this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the second book by Sayaka Murata I’ve read and I absolutely love the stories that this author comes up with. I was extremely excited to read this book and I’m so glad I got the opportunity to read it before it was released publicly to be able to recommend this to as many I people I can. It’s always an out of this world experience with these stories especially this one. This was such a wild read and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Thank you so much Grove Press for providing me this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

"It's a bit like a cat-café, isn't it? Petting them without being responsible for them, and when you've had enough you can just go home"

Set in a parallel world where marital intercourse is seen as an act of incest and having relationships outside of marriage is "normal" and the only way one can bear children is through artificial insemination which has reminded me a lot of Brave New World by Alex Huxley in terms of concept but Sayaka Murata's execution is completely unique to her. uncomfortable, and funny with few elements of horror

This story is, to me, a perfect blend between Open-relationships and obsessive Otakus which had served as a tool to discuss a variety of topics such as the notion of family, the purpose of having children and to what extent is the government willing to go just to keep producing children.

Divided into three parts in which we see Amane's life since childhood until adulthood where she explored her sexuality, her relationships with her lovers, her relationship with her mother and the struggle of understanding what is deemed normal and acceptable by society. Unable to discern between sanity and insanity.

One thing that was occurred often is the meaning her Amane's name and coincidentally her lovers and husband name, with the common theme being water, and after some digging, I realized that her fate was so cruel. she wasn't able to have the thing she wanted the most and ended up doing the thing she was so afraid of.

This was my first Sayaka Murata book, and boy was it a wild ride. The book is intriguing in premise, but I'm unsure how I really feel about the story itself. I'm a huge Black Mirror fan, which is what gravitated me to this, and I think that comparison holds true. Much like Black Mirror, Vanishing World is a story that dissects societal norms and influences through the impact of technology, and leaves the reader slightly disturbed with a "what the heck did I just watch/read mentality." ha.

In short, it is definitely a story that will leave you to ponder.

Vanishing World is split into three parts - the first two explore Amane’s early life, her sexual awakening and the events that led her and her husband to join an experimental city. While the plot is completing, the narrative quickly becomes tedious. Themes and conversations are repeated so often that I sometimes thought I had accidentally flipped back a few pages. The book relies heavily on dialogue and internal monologue rather than plot, which, combined with the circular nature of the discussions, made large portions of it feel stagnant.
The third part is where things pick up, with more action driving the story forward. Murata explores fascinating ideas - parasocial relationships, the emotional legitimacy of loving fictional characters, and the consequences of societal conditioning - but her analysis remains surface-level.
While I can appreciate the endings intent, suggesting that suppressing human instincts only forces them to manifest in more extreme ways, it was so disturbing that it overshadowed much of the experience for me. I can't, in good conscience, rate it higher than one star.

Omg. This author just totally blew up my mind and societal expectations, norms in a massive way. This book is so weird and interesting, challenging relationships, sex, gender, family, just anything you can imagine. And what a bizarre thought experiment but in the best way. Brace yourself for this wild ride!!

As a long-time fan of Sayaka Murata I was so excited for Vanishing World and I couldn't put it down. But maybe that was because I just wanted to finish it. Set in a world where humans no longer copulate to produce children and instead are all artificially inseminated, Vanishing World is an extremely uncomfortable read. I'd argue that it was more uncomfortable than Earthlings which is one of the most memorable books I've read purely based on how wacky it was. I love Murata's writing style and I knew I was in for a bizarre read, but I didn't expect it to be this wild. For Murata fans it's great, but for anyone who hasn't read anything by this author I'd recommend starting with her earlier books and to ease into the weirdness.

Vanishing World is Sayaka Murata's upcoming novel, set to be published in April. Murata, best known for Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings, has gained international acclaim for her sharp critique of social norms and her unique, often unsettling storytelling style. 💯
I first discovered this book through fellow readers on Bookstagram, and the moment I realized it was Murata’s new novel, I knew I had to read it. I love her literary style and the way she challenges conventions. 🥰
Set in Japan, Vanishing World imagines a future where artificial insemination has become the norm, gradually rendering traditional concepts like sex, family, and marriage obsolete. Murata, true to form, delivers another bizarre yet thought-provoking take on societal structures, pushing boundaries in ways that will both shock and fascinate readers. 😳
If you’ve read Murata before, you’ll know to expect discomfort, intrigue, and a deep, unsettling reflection on the norms we take for granted. This book made me think a lot about the shifting role of family and marriage in our own world. I think if the societal shifts Murata explores would take a long time to unfold in reality, likely facing strong resistance. 🤔
I’m so happy to have read this book, and I’ll continue to read whatever Murata publishes next.

Feeling slight disoriented after this one. But in the best way.

What a book!!!! So crazy unsettling but a great page turner

I was truly hooked.

I love this author. And this one def does not disappoint.

I would love to peek into this authors head. Would be a hell of a place to be.

Tq for this opportunity

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read an advanced copy!

I have read three other books by Sayaka Murata and really enjoyed them. Earthlings was the strangest book I’ve ever read but it captured me from beginning to end. Convenience store woman I loved and gave five stars. Because I have enjoyed her other books I was so excited when I got to read this book early. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations.

The premise is interesting and could have been a great base to explore social norms, but instead it just felt thin and repetative. We almost get no world building, and the main character Amane really just repeats the same thoughts and actions over and over again. That combined with the writing style and short sentences just did not work for me. I want to be swept away into these strange stories but instead I had to force myself to pick the book up.

I’m still gonna read the authors future books because I’m fascinated by her brain and what she will come up with next. But this one will sadly not be joining her others that already live on my bookshelves.

I’ve had my eye on Sayaka Murata for a while, and I was excited to finally read one of her books. The Vanishing World was unsettling, eerie, and deeply thought-provoking. Murata has a way of immersing the reader seamlessly into her world, and her ability to capture the most grotesque aspects of human nature—the insecurity, insatiable greed, and hypocrisy—is both disturbing and fascinating.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this book was its depiction of family structures. The way Murata presents them feels unsettlingly plausible, as if she’s holding up a warped mirror to our world. Whether her vision of the future is dystopian or just the inevitable evolution of society is left up to the reader to decide.

I also appreciate how direct and unflinching Murata’s writing is—she doesn’t waste words, and every sentence feels purposeful. That said, I found myself irritated with every single character, which I think was intentional. Their flaws are the driving force of the story, making them difficult to like but impossible to ignore. And then there’s Saku—his character felt so odd and disconnected from traditional masculinity that at times, it didn’t even feel like he was written as a man. Which I understand now was an intentional decision.

Overall, The Vanishing World was an unsettling yet compelling read, and Murata’s unique storytelling left a strong impression on me.

I have loved her past books, however this one was a not my favorite. I think my favorite is Earthlings. She indeed goes for the strange and surreal and I love that. When I read, I want to escape to worlds unknown and she knows how to put a person there. I look forward to her next book, as always .

This is my third Sayaka Murata book and I love how bizarre and unsettling her work is. I’m still deciding how I feel about this book, I have to sit with it a bit. 3.75 is where I’m sitting at with it!

“Normality is the creepiest madness there is. This was all insane, yet it was so right.”

Our main character is in search for her ‘normal’ constantly checking in with her instincts and desires surrounding the world of love, intimacy, romance, desire and connection. She is unique in this new world where she was born of love and sex instead of being a product of artificial insemination. People now only give birth through scientific methods and marry simply to have a co-parent and sex between couples is now taboo, but even that partnership is fading away as times go on. Romantic love now is mostly saved for fictional characters, if they even feel romance at all.

In an effort to test the best way to keep population efforts going, an experimental city is created where everyone gets inseminated no matter your gender, as male pregnancy efforts are underway. Every resident is Mother to all the nameless children who are simply called Komodo-Chan.

Our main character ends up there with her husband as she works out what is the best ‘normal’ for her.

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This book at its core is about the erasure of the nuclear family and all sexual and romantic relationships and feelings. In a way it felt like a story about most effectively cutting away intimate human connections to create the ideal population, one that will be emotionally unattached and mostly care about the collective in an almost creepy hive mind kind of way. This would also obviously make for better workers, people easier to control.

If you like a weird read, this is such a good one to get into. I think Convenience Store Woman is still my favourite book by her, but this is maybe second.

Thank you Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the early copy — I will probably buy a paperback as well!

PS. I will come back and add links to my social media reviews but below is my StoryGraph review link

Sadly my least favorite of Murata's works. Way too repetitious making it a struggle to get through. I'm used to the author's heavy-handed themes, but this was overkill for me.

"Normality is the creepiest madness there is..."

If you’re familiar with Sayaka Murata’s work, then you know she’s not afraid to go there! I’ve read and loved her previously translated works and was similarly riveted by Vanishing World, first published in 2015 with this English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori due to be released in April of this year.

In Vanishing World, Murata dissects ideas around normality, culture, and modern loneliness, as well as the limits of humanity and what it is that binds human beings together. Sex and romantic love soon become relics of the past as artificial insemination as a means to conceive becomes de rigueur. Parasocial relationships abound, marriage and ideas around family are called into question now that copulation becomes unnecessary. In a utopian Chiba-turned-Experiment City commune, adults live collectively as Mothers to eerily uniform Kodomo-chans. Technological advances mean that it is now possible for men and women of various age groups to carry a Kodomo-chan into the world.

As her mother proudly shares, Amane was conceived the ‘primitive’ way via copulation that has now become taboo. From a young age, her mother has instilled in her that to love and be loved and raise a family are good things she should want for herself. She wonders if this has now cursed her to be a person vulnerable to love and desire. The book traces her path through life from a childhood in Chiba to a future in Experiment City.

As with her other works, Sayaka Murata examines evolving cultural norms and how lonely it can be to go against the grain. In a society that quickly adapts and conforms to prevailing social norms, it can be difficult to be the nail that sticks out. As things change and people assimilate into new ways of being, to stick out risks being either forcibly hammered or softly pressured into place. It can be hard to recognise authentic individual instincts, much less exercise genuine free will, what more resist change. It can be hard to even know who you are!

This examination of human nature and societal customs is something I really appreciate reading. Human ideals, needs, and wants aren’t static. Cultures are always changing, societies are always shifting, worlds as we know it are always vanishing. Even what it means to be human is subject to change. What seems to stick around and drive the instinctive pull towards conformity in her works is our human tendency towards connection and (collective) survival, to ‘sustain life’ as she puts it. Survival is a form of resistance. Conversely, it is unnerving how easy it can be to be swept up in the flow of change towards a new ‘normal’, whatever that looks like, the despair in resisting the force of its currents.
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Motherhood is another layer she delves into here, in interesting ways. I don’t disagree with the notion that all children are ours, and we are all mothers in some way, whether one conceives/is able to conceive or not. To witness this particular iteration is another matter! I do feel, as with similar scenarios in medicine, that technological advancements driven by a desire to conceive or sustain life might well be the driving force that spearheads humanity as we know it into new terrain.
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And there’s that generational aspect too. Perhaps our formative relationships is another driver, at least I couldn’t help thinking this as I read about the relationship Amane has with her mother! We go through life figuring out who we are, and a pivotal part of that journey is refracted through the (authoritarian) relationships we first have with our parental figures, not uncommonly a reflection of society at large at a given point in time. That which creates can also destroy, that which we create can also destroy us.

I love reading her work also because she fully commits to the internal logic of her stories, and while they can seem confronting to our own accepted social norms, they’re not necessarily purely for shock value either (at least imo!). She guides you through her stories in a fairly didactic way that it almost makes sense when the story heads in a direction so absurd as to be sickening, and therein lies the horror! To that end, that ending!!! I did not want to go there but neither could I look away! 😱
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Another compelling novel by an auto-buy author who’s not afraid to confront the stuff of us, the elusive borders between our animal and human selves. Parts of it was loosely in conversation with some recent reads (The Hypocrite, The Word for World Is Forest), and I appreciated being able to spend more time thinking about changing social mores across time. The world we know now is not the same as it was even a short time ago. Cultures are built on the backs of others. As tempting as it may be, we can’t truly judge choices born of a different norm and, for better or worse, we can’t un-know something once we’ve eaten from the fruit of knowledge! 🫠 Would love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read this ❤️‍🔥

Thank you @groveatlantic @netgalley for this copy, very grateful!

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata is a dystopian speculative fiction set in an alternate Japan, where sex between married couples is as taboo as incest, and all children are born through artificial insemination.

The novel centers around Amane, a woman who feels estranged from her parents’ traditional act of procreation. As she moves through her sexless marriage and into the experimental community of Paradise-Eden, where children and parents are stripped of individuality and raised communally, the book explores themes of sexuality, human intimacy, reproduction, and alienation in an age of technological advancement.

While I thought the concept was interesting and executed in Murata’s distinct bizarre, offbeat style, the book’s biggest downfall is its uneven pacing due to excessive repetition. However, I’m unsure how much of this can be attributed to the translation. Once the characters arrive at Paradise-Eden (which should’ve happened much sooner), the story picks up and escalates quickly into a jarring ending of psychological unraveling.

3.5 stars

Wow! What a weird little book. This was a quick read for me...I tore through it in about 24 hours.
I'm still kind of reeling from the ending and grappling with the overall meaning of the book. I enjoyed the commentary on developing crushes on fictional characters in media, which the main character refers to as people from the "other world."

"Unlike with real people, love with someone who inhabited a story never came to an end or disappeared."

As a child, with a wild, vivid, imagination, I could relate to this in so many ways. I know this is perhaps a problem in younger generations where some people become more attached to fictional or famous people than real people, but I found the commentary less damning and more acknowledgement of the legitimacy of these imaginary relationships, especially for those who feel they don't fit in with society.

There were a lot of weird, funny quotes, that had me laughing out loud:

"Love is about having the courage to be called a pervert."

"Amane, thank you for eating me."

"Hanging there was an odd thing that looked like a huge flattened testicle."

Some parts were really hard to read due to the graphic nature, but they were still gripping and entertaining. I think I'll have to read this again when it comes out to really understand what the book is trying to say. However, I love a story that makes you think and this book does just that! I'm excited to reading more Sayaka Murata in the future.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!