unusual choices (most notably: tchotchke, which surely has no place in any Japanese novel not set in a Jewish milieu). From Makiko, who is struggling to make ends meet but is determined to go through with breast augmentation surgery, to Natsuko, who has climbed the social ladder and “wants to meet her future child”, to Yuriko, who has concluded that bringing a baby into the world is the worst thing an individual can do, Kawakami introduces a wide variety of characters and positions. Kawakami expands the reproductive rights discourse from the narrow hegemonic debate on pro-choice/pro-life to include the dignity of women and problematising the bioessentialised maternal instinct, and her novel lays out the alternatives available to women in Japan who break away from the norm. Midoriko has, for several months now, been entirely mute around her mother, writing her notes if she has to communicate, and otherwise writing in her journal (much of which we get to read) and reportedly behaving completely ordinarily when at school.

What would possess someone to go under the knife at a clinic with brochures that look like pamphlets for a VIP nightclub? I held off on her top pick for the moment and flipped through some of the other brochures, more interested in all the clinics that had failed to meet her standards. Before feminist scholarship examined motherhood from the perspective of women, early discourse around motherhood came to be constructed around maternal instincts, biological clocks and the morality of making the “right choice” by bringing a life into the world. We were constantly on red alert because my dad would beat the shit out of us or break things for no reason.

The cast of characters which Natsuko surrounds herself with here each work like bumper cars for Natsuki to ricochet off; despite the crawling pace of Book Two, Natsuko nevertheless exists in a hurricane, occasionally knocked by an experience or conversation shared with Rika, Sengawa, or Aizawa.

Book Two, on the other hand, offers us multiple stances, opinions, and ideas when it comes to carrying, giving birth, and raising a child.I had the feeling of listening to someone speaking in the dark: casual intimacies interspersed with fanciful, terrifying and dreamlike interludes. Kawakami uses this as a device to explore and critique the misogynistic and heteronormative state of access to reproductive technologies in contemporary Japan, but her questioning goes further than how to have children. Her main characters grew up poor, and she deftly depicts how this shaped their future lives and the way they view people and situations around them. With our team of dedicated reviewers we provide readers with insightful critiques that not only delve into the narrative but also its cultural significance.