Life Ceremony: stories

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hmmmm. i love the concept but this was a bit of a miss for me. i just dont really get it, i think? is there even a point that was being made? whatever, i guess they can't all be bangers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But why? It’s no different from your hair, or mine. It’s more natural for us than hair from any other animal—it’s a material really close to us. i don't even want to keep middle aged men in my life or near me or in existence, let alone as a PET. Sayaka Murata (村田沙耶香 Murata Sayaka; born August 14, 1979) is a Japanese writer. She has won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, and the Akutagawa Prize. ok yeah i see what's happening!!! enjoyed this one, although it felt a little incomplete (but it's a short story so i think i'll just have to get used to that). will never look at wedding veils the same way again. cheers!

Stories on society, and how little tweaks and changes mean all the difference to conformity and what's conceived as normal not sure why this and earhtlings had so many similarities but other than that i liked the overall message a lot! i love sayaka murata, that talented freak. can't wait to see how goddamn weird these are going to be 💗 Life Ceremony: Stories, English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Grove Atlantic, 2022, ISBN 9780802159588. [28]All stories aim to challenge some aspect of normality, so it would be impossible for me to recommend a wholly "innocent" one for the more... conventional readers. Even so, I would definitely assign this as compulsory reading to all proponents of the woke movement, especially those keen to point out cultural appropriation wherever they go. And to all those who enjoy getting their world view challenged of course, even if in a rather queasy and nauseating manner. Talk about a unilateral decision. What could be more normal than making people into clothes or furniture after they die? How come you’ve got such an aversion to it? I passed him the bag containing the pair of wineglasses from Aya and Yumi, put down my purse and the bag of groceries, and took off my duffle coat. His smile instantly vanished, replaced by a scowl. Survival (short story), English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Penguin Books, Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a World Divided, 2020, ISBN 9780143133926. [33] the last line in this short story collection is....... something else. i liked this one, but i felt a little confused by the end (??????? someone dm me and tell me wtf happened). other than that, pretty good conclusion!

He must have only just arrived home since he was still in his shirt and tie, with a cardigan over his shoulders, and was turning on the underfloor heating. I mean, normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.The same characters as the previous one, but a much needed story following the previous one. Beautiful relationship and newly discovered family. Life Ceremony is a collection of short stories that is every bit as off-kilter and visceral as her novel Earthlings. There are lots of innards, lots of food, lots of sex (or no sex at all), lots of bodily fluids. Sometimes all at the same time… this was super short, but it had all of my favorite sayaka murata things in it……. societal commentary..….. asexual representation…… convenience stores……. my favorite so far!!

Life Ceremony uncovers Murata’s preoccupation with our species’ norms writ large, beyond gender, sex, and reproduction. Several stories imagine near-future worlds in which bodies find new uses after death . . . In offering such exaggerated scenarios, Murata exposes the lunacy of the norms we so blithely follow . . . Murata’s lifelong feeling of being a stranger has given her a perspective from which to create her worlds.”— WIREDNormal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal,” writes Sayaka Murata in her short story collection “Life Ceremony.” With childlike naiveté and disorientingly flat prose that never passes judgment, Murata takes taboos to extremes to expose the ultimately arbitrary nature of societal norms. Without ever reaching a conclusive answer, she asks if and how those who see through society’s “temporary mirage of little lies” can retain their humanity and sense of self.

Sayaka Murata is an incredible and thoroughly enjoyable author. I adored her two previous publications which were both five star reads for me All notions of social constructs begin to melt away under Murata’s fiery blast in these stories, and the world begins to be depicted as wild, a society of Earth rather than a collection of society upon it. ‘ I had the feeling that humans were becoming more and more like animals,’ she writes. In Puzzle, the narrator begins seeing people as organs within buildings—’ All the people crawling around in the world were the shared inner organs of all the gray buildings like herself’—before seeing them all as organs of a larger world, all connected and performing our own functions as part of a whole. In this, Murata’s characters find freedom. I choked up in spite of myself, and Naoki avoided looking at me as he drummed his fingers irritably on the floor. i liked this just about as much as the first one, which is to say that i did not love it but did not dislike it either. food is one of my least favorite subjects to read about but this was kind of fun, actually! Naoki hardly ever smoked, and he only ever reached for his cigarettes when he was really stressed and irritable and needed to calm himself down. I always did my best to comfort him whenever he lit up after work, complaining about being tired, but this time it was my fault he was feeling like this—just because of what I was wearing, I thought miserably.

I wouldn't even mind if the story was a bit longer but it had a lot more potential it just wasn't used to its best.