Praise for Life Ceremony :
An Indie Next Selection
“Murata’s prose is deadpan, as clear as cellophane . . . Chilly and transgressive at the same time . . . Murata is interested in how disgust drives ethics, in why some things repel us but not others . . . Murata’s prose, in this translation from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is generally so cool you could chill a bottle of wine in it.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“Twelve engrossing entries that probe intimacy and individuality while turning norms upside down . . . Strange and bold.”—Time , “New Books You Need to Read This Summer”
“Picking up on themes in her novel Earthlings , most of these stories are about alienation, exploring what it means to be ‘normal’ through a close focus on characters, nearly always women, who do not conform to social expectations . . . The author’s plain, clear, observational style makes the stories strangely believable, easy to read and hard to forget.”—Lisa Tuttle, Guardian
“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.”—WIRED
“Sayaka Murata writes about the life more ordinary . . . But ordinary is a shape-shifting concept . . . Murata’s prose, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is both spare and dreamlike . . . Murata’s skill is in turning round the world so that the abnormal, uncivil or even savage paths appear—if momentarily—to make sense.”—Louise Lucas, Financial Times
“Life Ceremony is not a book for the squeamish or easily shocked . . . Much of the humor in these stories comes from the incongruity of grotesque elements in quotidian settings, such as when the characters in Life Ceremony discuss with perfect earnestness how they’ll have to carefully prepare a deceased co-worker’s flesh for a stir-fry with cashew nuts . . . At their best, these macabre stories are suffused with a tender compassion for the foibles of their characters.”—Florentyna Leow, Japan Times
“In Life Ceremony , Murata’s first collection of short stories to appear in English, her narratives are conspicuously weirder, weird in the sense of weird tales—dark and macabre, surprising and strange. The twelve stories blend humor and horror to examine societal norms, and to expose how bizarre and oppressive certain social standards and traditions can be, especially for women . . . Murata’s signature matter-of-fact tone makes this off-kilter reality both viscerally and intellectually provocative . . . Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Murata’s style is deceptively blunt and direct, making for a lightning-quick read. And yet, the stories’ haunting premises linger in the mind.”—Kathleen Rooney, Liber
“Mixes her signature blend of the humorous, the awkward, and the terrifying to tell stories of loners and outcasts who buck traditions and societal expectations. Murata’s stories will have you questioning what it means to be human in this world and what is sacrificed when we try too hard to fit in.”—Book Riot
“A strange, inventive, and disconcerting collection of dystopian fiction . . . Marvel at Murata’s brash imagination and bravery, but be warned: Life Ceremony is not for the squeamish.”—New Statesman
“The short-story format serves up a buffet of settings for Murata to work her magic. Whether they’re about eating one’s colleagues, or a sexless marriage, the stories are snapshots of rational, believable worlds on which are projected normal madnesses—and things we might not want to admit we think about—in all their funny, disgusting, innocent human glory.”—Russell Thomas, South China Morning Post
“[Life Ceremony is] strange. Like, brilliantly, properly strange—there’s nothing you’ve read before that you can compare to this. Want to read about a girl who falls in love with her bedroom curtain? You can do that here. How about people who honour their dead by eating them and then procreating? You came to the right place. It’s a wild ride to the edges of your imagination and comprehension—and well worth the trip.”—Harper’s Bazaar (Australia)
“Once more, internationally bestselling Murata confronts unspeakable topics with quotidian calm, shockingly convincing logic, and creepy humor in a dozen genre-defying stories . . . Murata groupies will appreciate a glimpse of characters from Earthlings , while readers seeking the undefinable will enjoy these tales immensely.”—Terry Hong, Booklist (starred review)
“A singular collection . . . [Murata] investigates the validity of our most basic rituals—how humans eat, marry, procreate, and die—and incisively explores the rich, messy stuff left behind once they’re violated . . . Murata’s stories are tightly woven and endlessly surprising, with far more going on beneath the surface than is initially evident and surprising moments of unexpected beauty . . . Murata’s writing remains essential and captivating, expertly capturing the fragility of social norms and calling into question what remains of human nature once they’re stripped away. Beautiful, disturbing, and thought-provoking.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“With Life Ceremony , Sayaka Murata has created a series of funhouse mirrors, each story in the collection pushing readers to reconsider what is true, distorting the image so completely as to open the viewer to new and unexpected perspectives . . . Each story displays a fine-boned architecture, a careful curation of details and paring away of the extraneous. The result is remarkable, the lean force of Murata’s imagination rippling through each piece.”—Shelf Awareness
“In this off-kilter collection, Murata brings a grotesque whimsy to her fables of cultural norms . . . Like the author’s novels, this brims with ideas.”—Publishers Weekly
“Murata’s premises are always eye-opening, and the result will intrigue and satisfy readers of literary and speculative fiction alike.”—Library Journal
Praise for Sayaka Murata:
“To Sayaka Murata, nonconformity is a slippery slope . . . Reminiscent of certain excellent folk tales, expressionless prose is Murata’s trademark . . . The strength of [Murata’s] voice lies in the faux-naïf lens through which she filters her dark view of humankind: We earthlings are sad, truncated bots, shuffling through the world in a dream of confusion.”—New York Times Book Review
“Murata takes a childlike idea and holds onto it with imaginative fervor, brilliantly exposing the callousness and arbitrariness of convention.”—New Yorker
“Murata manages what her characters cannot: She transcends society’s core values, to dizzying effect . . . Her matter-of-fact rendering of wild events is as disorienting as it is intriguing.”—Atlantic
“If you’re in the mood for weird, Sayaka Murata is always a reliable place to turn.”—Seattle Times
“The imagination of this writer grows and grows like outer space.”—Literary Hub
“Murata celebrate[s] the quiet heroism of women who accept the cost of being themselves.”—NPR’s Fresh Air
“Murata’s sparkly writing and knack for odd, beautiful details are totally her own.”—Vogue
“Murata’s novels are a valuable, heightened exploration of the intense discomfort that people, autistic or not, who are just a little outside of society can feel when they try to force themselves to fit in. Murata’s message is: stop trying.”—i-D
05/02/2022
In this off-kilter collection, Murata (Convenience Store Woman ) brings a grotesque whimsy to her fables of cultural norms. Eating habits are a recurring theme. In “A Magnificent Spread,” a woman plans to serve strange dishes from her imaginary kingdom, “the magical city of Dundilas,” at a gathering for her fiancé’s parents, who have their own dietary preferences. The moral, it seems, is that one shouldn’t impose one’s culture on other people. The title story is set in an alternate Japan with an endangered human population, which has led to the macabre custom of eating deceased people at their funerals and then finding an “insemination partner.” In “Eating the City,” a forager prowls Tokyo for local greens—dandelions, mugwort, fleabane—in an effort to develop a closer connection to the urban jungle. Seeing a homeless person on one of her outings, she reflects: “I was probably more a feral human than he was.” The final story, “Hatchling,” presents a reductive take on the difference between one’s social persona and one’s authentic self. The wooden dialogue adds to the sense of comic defamiliarization, which produces the kind of laughs that catch in the throat. Like the author’s novels, this brims with ideas though it’s less enchanting. (July)
07/01/2022
"Thirty years ago a completely different sense of values was the norm, and I just can't keep up with the changes," moans Maho in the title story of Murata's first collection published in the United States since her 2018 breakout with Convenience Store Woman . What has Maho so flummoxed is the eating of a deceased person's flesh at the joyous celebrations that have replaced funerals, and many of the stories here explore inversions of accepted standards, challenging us to consider why we believe what we believe. Engaged couple Nana and Naoki quarrel because Naoki is repulsed by the use of human bodies for clothes and furniture, which to most people seems both to honor the deceased and to use resources efficiently. In a wily sendup of cross-cultural (mis)understanding, a woman gulps down blue-powdered health drinks with her husband even as she is horrified to learn that her sister plans to cook for her future in-laws—the sister claims to come from the magical city of Dundilas, where the food is decidedly different. But rapprochement is achieved in the end. VERDICT Though a few stories could have been better developed, Murata's premises are always eye-opening, and the result will intrigue and satisfy readers of literary and speculative fiction alike.
A cast of gifted narrators inhabits this edgy, sometimes gruesome, collection of short stories by Japanese author Murata, best known for her cult novel, CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN. Eunice Wong delivers the title story, as well as “A Magnificent Spread,” lending a tone of mischief to tales of macabre food adventures. Nancy Wu’s warm voice deftly handles the most sentimental of the stories, “A Summer Night’s Kiss” and “Two’s Family.” Natalie Naudus, Jeena Yi, Pun Bandhu, and Emily Woo Zeller round out the rest of this first-rate team of storytellers; each of their voices is unique, but each is also a piece of a larger mosaic. This is what a masterful audio collection of short stories should be and one that experienced listeners will relish. D.G.L. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
★ 2022-05-25
“Everyone always says that things like common sense or instinct or morals are carved in stone,” Yamamoto, an affable 39-year-old businessman, muses. “But…actually, they’re always changing….It’s always been that way.” In her debut short story collection, the author of Convenience Store Woman (2016) investigates the validity of our most basic rituals—how humans eat, marry, procreate, and die—and incisively explores the rich, messy stuff left behind once they’re violated. "A First-Rate Material," set in a society that repurposes the body parts of dead people into home goods, features a woman who desperately covets a ring made from human bone despite her fiance’s steadfast disapproval. The unsettling "Poochie" features two elementary school girls who adopt a suit-wearing former businessman as a pet; when they suspect his escape, the girls confront the idea of owning any living thing. "A Magnificent Spread" and "Eating the City" unpack the strangeness surrounding food rituals. The title story explores a society whose severe population shrinkage has turned procreation “into a form of social justice,” spurring the creation of “life ceremonies”—wakelike celebrations that involve partaking of the deceased’s body and finding an “insemination partner” for "copulation." “Recently I’d been getting the feeling that humans had begun to resemble cockroaches in their habits,” the dubious businesswoman Maho muses, given their propensity to “gather to ‘eat’ a deceased one of their number.” Still, upon the unexpected death of a close co-worker, she’s taken aback by the otherworldly beauty of a final encounter with her friend. Murata’s stories are tightly woven and endlessly surprising, with far more going on beneath the surface than is initially evident and surprising moments of unexpected beauty. If there’s a drawback, it’s that sometimes the characters seem less like three-dimensional people than vehicles for ideas, rendering the collection almost too thematically cohesive. Nonetheless, Murata’s writing remains essential and captivating, expertly capturing the fragility of social norms and calling into question what remains of human nature once they’re stripped away.
Beautiful, disturbing, and thought-provoking.
