Life Ceremony: Stories
Sayaka Murata tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Life Ceremony: Stories
Sayaka Murata tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
... a series of funhouse mirrors, each story in the collection pushing readers to reconsider what is true, distorting the image so completely as to open the viewer to new and unexpected perspectives.
Murata’s prose is deadpan, as clear as cellophane, and has the tidiness of a bento box. She’s not the most subtle writer. You don’t read her for her extra-fine perceptual apparatus. You read her because when her stuff works, it’s chilly and transgressive at the same time.
... her narratives are conspicuously weirder, weird in the sense of weird tales—dark and macabre, surprising and strange. The twelve stories blend humor and horror to examine societal norms, and to expose how bizarre and oppressive certain social standards and traditions can be, especially for women.
Murata’s prose, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is both spare and dreamlike...But she can also take delight in describing stomach-turning scenarios.
The collection is unsettling, paved with the disturbances of odd people and new customs nestled amidst familiar words and routines.
Once more, internationally bestselling Murata confronts unspeakable topics with quotidian calm, shockingly convincing logic, and creepy humor in a dozen genre-defying stories.
Most of the stories are deeply unsettling.
Though a few stories could have been better developed, Murata’s premises are always eye-opening, and the result will intrigue and satisfy readers of literary and speculative fiction alike..
A singular collection that probes the most foundational rituals of human society.
In this off-kilter collection, Murata brings a grotesque whimsy to her fables of cultural norms.