Life Ceremony - Sayaka Murata
Book 52 of 2023
Life Ceremony is the first collection of short stories by Sayaka Murata to be translated into English.
Having read both Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings by this author I knew I was in for a bit of a wild ride. Previous reviews I spotted for the book have once again described her writing as "not for everyone" and I would repeat that. The stories in this collection are a bit "off the wall", and I don't think I have ever whispered "WTF" to myself as much as I did while reading this collection.
In the title story Life Ceremony we are introduced to a future society where upon death the deceased is not buried or cremated, but eaten at a lavish ceremony which ends with people choosing a partner to try and procreate with. In another story A First Rate Material an engaged couple fight over the fact that they cannot agree about whether to use furniture and clothes made from human remains - which is known to be the height of fashion. The would-be brides friends often remark about how strange it is that her boyfriend refuses to buy here jewelry set in human bone.
We also have stories about wild foraging, loving bedroom soft furnishings and purposely marrying someone who you have no emotional connection with, just to have an easy life. And more!
What reality these stories are set in is never very clear. In Life Ceremony the protagonist talks about how when she was a child she joked about eating someone and everyone was shocked and thought she had something wrong with her, yet in "today's society" if you DON'T eat people (as she refuses to) there is something wrong, but there is little to no reference to anything from "now".
So, yes, this is probably the weirdest collection of short stories I have ever read. At times it was difficult to read it while eating - see cannibalism - but I found almost every story fascinating. A brilliant collection.
*My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book for review. Apologies that it took me far too long to get to it.
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