Earthlings

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Earthlings is a multi-genre extravaganza from the planet Popinpobopia.
It starts as a fable, mixed with a kids' story, then stirs in science fiction, crime and horror, all served up as misery lit.
The narrator seems like an idiot savant: at times stuck in childhood, at times perspicacious about the nature of modern human society, though not nearly as perspicacious as your average sociologist or anthropologist: if only the author or her characters could have read some.
The three main characters deserve and elicit our sympathy, but they are anti-conformists not non-conformists, and so equally shaped by the society they hate as is everyone else.
A happily retired translator is not going to criticise a working translator, so I'll assume the original Japanese version reads as awkwardly as the English version. Fortunately, the narrator's perverse character, the author's story-telling skill and the book's insights into contemporary Japan and its cultural conflicts are enough to keep the reader going until the spaceship arrives.



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