Breasts and Eggs: A Novel
A BEST BOOK OF 2020
TIME Magazine・The Atlantic・Book Riot・Electric Literature・The New York Times (Notable Book of the Year)
The story of three women by a writer hailed by Haruki Murakami as Japan's most important contemporary novelist, WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE.
On a sweltering summer day, Makiko travels from Osaka to Tokyo, where her sister Natsu lives. She is in the company of her daughter, Midoriko, who has lately grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with adolescence. The story of these three women reunited in a working-class neighborhood of Tokyo is told through the gaze of Natsu--thirty years old, an aspiring writer, haunted by hardships endured in her youth. Over the course of their few days together in the capital, Midoriko's silence will prove a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and family secrets.
On yet another blistering summer's day eight years later, Natsu, during a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless.
One of Japan's most important and best-selling writers, Mieko Kawakami mixes stylistic inventiveness, wry humor, and riveting emotional depth to tell a story of contemporary womanhood in Japan. Breasts and Eggs recounts the intimate journeys of three women on the path to finding peace and futures they can call their own.
"Original and deeply moving...This book is a gift."--Laura van den Berg
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Community Reviews
People are willing to accept the pain and suffering of others, limitless amounts of it, as long as it helps them to keep on believing in whatever it is that they want to believe. Love, meaning, doesnât matter.
Overall it was very poignant and reflecting. Recommended for anyone who loves to read about social commentary on the commercialization of women's anatomy and its affects on society /individuals.
3.75 stars/5
It’s a two part book of 430 pages. The book gets interesting and argumentative in the second part when narrator speaks about troubles of having a kid and women’s issues of being single mother through artificial insemination.
The legal trouble of becoming a single mother through sperm donors and social issues of such kids. The book is narrated in the first person by a women who is an author. A different and a bold book you will read from a Japanese author. Give it 50 pages, then you’re slowly hooked.
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