Review: “Earthlings”

Sayaka Murata’s “Earthlings” is a very Japanese novel with a very Japanese protagonist.

It starts nice and proper like novels do in Japan, with a girl who doesn’t fit in. Japanese novels always have a girl who doesn’t fit in. But this girl, she really doesn’t fit in.

Murata writes clean and sharp about a girl who thinks she’s an alien. The girl has a plush pastel-coloured toy hedgehog that knows things. It’s that kind of book, until it isn’t.

She hits all the notes you expect from these Japanese novels about alienated outsiders. The lonely childhood. The school work panic. The marriage pressures. The convenience store life. But then something happens. Something bad. Then worse. Then much worse.

You think you’re reading about a misfit finding her way. Like those books about quirky girls that sell well in airports. The ones where everyone learns and grows and finds themselves. This isn’t that.

This is a scary and hilariously terrifying book that starts with microwave dinners and ends with cannibalism. There’s boring day jobs and murder. There’s social commentary and human meat. There’s a ribbon of stars. A string of silkworms.

It’s like Murata wrote a nice proper Japanese novel and then ate it. Raw.

Before vomiting it back up.

Vomiting it back to life.