Life Ceremony

Life Ceremony / Sayaka Murata
trans. from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori
NY: Grove, 2022.
256 p.

If you've read Murata before, you'll be ready for the weirdness of these stories. If you haven't encountered her before, well, get ready. Because these are strange ones! 

It's her first collection of short stories in English, and these 12 stories cover a range of situations, although all are imbued with her boundary-crossing sensibility. They approach social norms at a slant, turning them upside down and wondering why they exist and what for. Sometimes that can be uncomfortable to read, particularly in the title story (at least for me). 

I found the story that was most memorable to me was "A First Rate Material", in which engaged couple Nana and Naoki hold differing opinions on the use of human bodily materials to make household items (ie: Nana's human hair sweater or the many bone tables etc.) Nana thinks it's a wonderful memorial; Naoki is completely weirded out by it. 

The title story is creepy and nauseating, but you can definitely see her style and themes there. If you don't mind a bit of icky reading, you'll get through it. The other stories look at life in different ways as well, and there is a lot to think about after reading these. I found the collection a little uneven, with some of the stories very short and vignette-like, while others are longer and more cohesive. But if you are interested in weird stories that shake up social norms, this is the collection for you.