Diary of a Void
Emi Yagi, trans. by David Boyd and Lucy North
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Diary of a Void
Emi Yagi, trans. by David Boyd and Lucy North
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Some premises prove so irresistible that they become crutches, excusing a colorless execution. That’s not the case here, although Yagi’s gambit is seductive enough to prop up a more ordinary book.
The speculative conceit reigns in contemporary publishing, where few novels live up to their promise of revelatory social commentary. But a particularly good one can still tempt even the most cynical of readers.
Another author might have played the idea for slapstick or suspense.
Built into the form of the diary is a perverse kind of intimacy, which sometimes turns the reader not into a confidant but a voyeur. Yagi makes use of this doubled anxiety — of self-disclosure, but also the possibility of being read, and therefore the possibility of being found out as a fraud — to draw attention to how much the pregnant woman is scrutinized in everyday life.
Yagi doesn’t exalt or condemn Shibata for her choices, nor does she suggest that her protagonist should be doing something else or that her limited act of protest makes her a paragon of resistance. She’s just one woman doing what she desires.
A bleak, acerbic, melancholy story.
An inspired premise.
Riveting and surreal.