05 Mar / Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd [in Booklist]
Japan’s literary superstar Mieko Kawakami (Ms Ice Sandwich, 2018) significantly expands her 2008 Akutagawa Prize novella, notably translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. Her writer-wannabe protagonist’s names are prescient homages: Natsuko (summer child) references poet Ichiyō Higuchi, aka Natsuko Higuchi, who appears on the ¥5000-note; Natsume (summer-eyes) is a nod to Japan’s most famous novelist, Natsume Sōseki.
As for the story, Natsuko Natsume hosts her older sister and daughter for a rare Tokyo visit in the midst of an oppressive summer. Single mother Makiko loudly obsesses over her middle-aged breasts, while tween Midoriko silently endures the bewilderment of adolescence. Broken eggs – literally – crack open a torrent of truth by the visit’s end.
Fast forward 10 years, and Natsuko is a published author-on-the-rise and, approaching 40, eager to have a child. In a society where bloodlines are sacred and reproduction not a woman’s individual right, motherhood by donor is a desperate option for both parent and progeny who can never know their full identity. Within an affecting portrait-of-an-artist-in-transition, Kawakami deftly, deeply questions the assumptions of womanhood and family – the bonds and abuses, expectations and betrayals, choices and denials.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, March 1, 2020
Readers: Adult
Published: 2008 (Japan), 2020 (United States)