Breasts and Eggs

hardcover, 448 pages

Published April 7, 2020 by Europa Editions.

ISBN:: 978-1-60945-587-3

(1 review)

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. 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 summer's day eight years later, Natsu, during a journey back to her native city, confronts her anxieties about growing old alone and childless.

Bestselling author Mieko Kawakami mixes stylistic inventiveness and riveting emotional depth to tell a story of contemporary womanhood in Japan.

7 editions

kab reviewed Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

3 stars

I appreciate that female friendships and fulfilment without a romantic relationship are themes in the author's work. Writing about poverty and classism from the opening chapter also boded well, but in the end I was disconnected from every one of the characters' thought processes and motivations. Disengaging scenes included the later-unreflected-upon policing of gender when the protagonist is trying to work up the nerve to tell someone off for being in the women's section of a bathhouse, and when the protagonist speaks during the Q&A after a donor conception meeting and her argument degenerates and she lands on talking about parents murdering their own children. More than one character rants about inflicting life on people who never asked to be born and it teeters near ableist ideas of what lives are worth living. Natsuko concludes that Yuriko and Sengawa were right, and instead of standing up for herself, her decision …

I appreciate that female friendships and fulfilment without a romantic relationship are themes in the author's work. Writing about poverty and classism from the opening chapter also boded well, but in the end I was disconnected from every one of the characters' thought processes and motivations. Disengaging scenes included the later-unreflected-upon policing of gender when the protagonist is trying to work up the nerve to tell someone off for being in the women's section of a bathhouse, and when the protagonist speaks during the Q&A after a donor conception meeting and her argument degenerates and she lands on talking about parents murdering their own children. More than one character rants about inflicting life on people who never asked to be born and it teeters near ableist ideas of what lives are worth living. Natsuko concludes that Yuriko and Sengawa were right, and instead of standing up for herself, her decision is more about stubbornness and the readiness to fail. On top of already being at a remove from the story, there were prominent translation errors throughout that kept taking me out of it.