Breasts and Eggs

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As is typical of this strange and unwieldy book, we’re presented with the most complicated and radical positions just as the narrative veers towards a less challenging and somewhat neat denouement. Its unobtrusive plot masks a work of remarkable complexity that launches a radical challenge to both the political and literary status quo. Their interior sense of self, with which they must make sense of the fantastical and often sense-less setting around them, is the only constant. In contrast to Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy or Jenny Offill’s Dept of Speculation, Kawakami is largely uninterested in exploring conflicts between the processes of art and mothering.

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami review - The Guardian

In Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami paints a radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working class womanhood in Japan, recounting the heartbreaking journeys of three women in a society where the odds are stacked against them. Yet she couches this in the familiar interior voice, which allows readers to maintain a sense of intimacy with her protagonists. At the station, the doors opened with a sound like something being punctured, and a drunk old man staggered onto the train. The protagonist, Natsume Natsuko—in all senses in between these two women—offers cogent commentary on their emotional struggles.I was preoccupied with making sure Midoriko was still behind us, and I engaged with Makiko just enough to sound like I was listening—but the thing that really got me was her face.

Breasts and Eggs a book by Mieko Kawakami, Sam Bett, and Breasts and Eggs a book by Mieko Kawakami, Sam Bett, and

To cut corners, the bar makes their own brew, then chills it in the fridge and serves it up in old oolong cans. Unable to come to terms with her changed body after giving birth, Makiko becomes obsessed with the prospect of getting breast enhancement surgery.

The following year, she published Breasts and Eggs as a short novella, and won praise from Yoko Ogawa and Haruki Murakami. Breasts and Eggs isn’t just a delightful read (though I loved every minute of it); it’s a deeply important book.

Breasts and Eggs Quotes by Mieko Kawakami - Goodreads Breasts and Eggs Quotes by Mieko Kawakami - Goodreads

In Bett and Boyd’s translation, Kawakami’s feminism is vivid, but the language occasionally feels placid; meanwhile, in Kawai’s translation, feminism and language collide in a way that feels deliciously irreverent. However much asexuality may be trending in the academic sphere, we have yet to see many mainstream novels with asexual main characters, and Natsuko is a beautifully complex, compelling and sympathetic character. But we get to read Midoriko’s diary entries, and learn that her silence is a manifestation of her horror at what she has learned about growing up as a woman: “Set up to give birth, even before I was born. Makiko – who works in an Osaka hostess bar and is worried about the effects of ageing on her employability – has come to the city to explore options for cheap breast augmentation, her obsession forcing a wedge between her and the other characters.In episodes that are as comical as they are revealing of deep yearning, she seeks direction from other women in her life—her mother, her grandmother, friends, as well as her sister—and only after dramatic and frequent changes of heart, decides in favor of artificial insemination. A host of bestselling authors — Banana Yoshimoto, Haruki Murakami, Kazuki Kaneshiro, Yu Miri, Sayaka Murata, Hiromi Kawakami, and others, all of whom have work translated into English — have grappled in different and rewarding ways with this perspective. For impoverished novelist Natsuko, the protagonist of Mieko Kawakami’s Japanese bestseller, motherhood and self-sacrifice seem to encapsulate the experience of working-class women. Here is Brett and Boyd, translating Midoriko’s response to her mother’s desire for surgery: “It’s gross, I really don’t understand. Meanwhile, her twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko is paralyzed by the fear of her oncoming puberty and finds herself unable to voice the vague, yet overwhelming anxieties associated with growing up.

Breasts and Eggs - Mieko Kawakami - Google Books

Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with Breasts and Eggs.It’s this clash between lack of oomph and leisurely length that makes the second story in Breasts and Eggs less engaging than the first. It’s no good to blame one’s difficulties on a lack of heteronormative, breadwinning biological parents, because even that traditionally valorized form of family structure is no guarantee of happiness or a good life. I couldn't move; in fact, I was being pulled away, slipping further every second from the blinding light of that reality. Ultimately she settles on the idea of using donor sperm to become pregnant and much of the book is occupied with her ambivalence toward this self and society-imposed quest.