Earthlings definitely wasn't at all what I expected and yet, in a way it was. The book is a thought-provoking social commentary about our - earthlings, society. A lot of dark themes are woven into the story (rape, abuse, cannibalism, murder), so from the get go I want to say that if someone is not okay with reading about things like that, please find another book - this one gets quite intense.
The story revolves around Natsuki, who's different from society's norms and that's a very integral part of the plot. Seeing her life, both the "now" and the "past", the reader is presented with a lot of issues and questions about the meaning of life. I can't say much more without spoiling, but I truly liked how many things were touched on and how well done it was.
The characters were curious, even the ones that I didn't like at all on personal level, and they were really well written. I enjoyed how their personalities and traits evolved throughout the book.
Overall, not a light read, however a very good book in my opinion and one that I do recommend. On the other hand, I definitely don't recommend it to readers under ages 14-16.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Granta Publications for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.*

Murata’s construction of character is just phenomenal and Natsuki, the protagonist of Earthlings, has been rattling around in my head ever since I finished the novel a few days ago. She’s an unusual person, much like the main character of Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, who has very very extreme views that readers definitely won’t agree with (I hope!) but somehow she still evokes empathy; you can’t help but root for her. If you like weird books (I’m thinking along the lines of Bunny by Mona Awad or The Pisces by Melissa Broder) or if you enjoyed Murata’s first novel then you’ll like this.

This was a strange, fascinating but ultimately repelling book. I very much enjoyed convenience store woman, and this story of a Japanese woman in her thirties had some similarities. She struggles to relate to anyone else due to abuse from her family and travel as a child, and had built herself a circumscribed life that her family don't understand. The description of her childhood was a tough read, but there were also some beautiful descriptions of the Japanese countryside. She enters into a marriage of convenience with a man who enables her retreat into a fantasy world, and events spiral. This was quite a compelling read, but in the end I disliked it. It reminded me of Chuck Palahniuk, with mentally ill people struggling to be part of society.

This is such a puzzling, thought provoking book. I devoured it in two days.

Following Natsuki who endured emotion and sexual abuse from a young age and copes by depersonalisation, we see her navigate life throughout the fringes of society - or The Factory - in her firm belief that she is in fact an alien from the planet Popinpobopia.

What sounds non-nonsensical later develops into a startling allegory for society as a whole, morality, integration, outsider status and much, much more. Rather than casting judgement on any one character's actions, when looked at in the context of our own lives, you cannot help but question: are we too not just part of the factory. Is society the one that is sick?

Gulped up Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. Imagine the strangeness of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, the tension of Sarah Moss and the mournful beauty of Ocean Vuong. Yet it's also like nothing else I've ever read. So much to unpick and digest. What a book.

Loved the authors first book ,could not wait to read this one.This is a gem of a novel a book that drew me in with characters dialogue that shine.Will be recommending and gifting.#netgalley#earthling

I read this based on how much I enjoyed the author's previous novel, Convenience Store Woman, and the very effective Twitter video of readers finishing the book, which intrigued me.

The story follows Natsuki at 11 years old and again at 34 as she experiences terrible traumas and tries to come to terms with them within a culture that prioritises conformity above all else. Natsuki, her cousin Yuu and her husband Tomoya, all of whom have suffered abuse and are failing to handle it, develop a shared universe in which their alienation from the world makes sense and which drives them to increasingly bizarre and terrible behaviours.

Although the novel includes a series of horrific scenes including, child sexual abuse, incest, violence against children and murder, the detached and "alien" perspective of Natsuki means that the true horror is society's attempts to deny, cover up and hide them in order to force all the characters into what Natsuki and Tomayo refer to as The Factory, where they will act as good tools and good reproducers.

Earthlings is a book full of horrors and monstrosities, of which the worst is the real world. and a gripping tale of destroyed lives. At its core, it is thematically similar to Convenience Store Woman, but it goes much further in its exploration of the theme.

Earrthlings asks some serious questions. So much of the book is dark and uncomfortable, it’s a shape shifter, a unique tale that takes so much from the reader. So much of me questions if it should even exisist, but I am glad it does. It is like no book I have ever read before. It needs warning before reading, for so many reasons and yet it is much more than a story of bravery. To call it mad and loopy is ian unjustice, when you first dive into the plot and say its about cousins who want a spaceship to take them home, that is true, but its obviously much more than a story of finding home or identiy.

Natsuiki lives a damaged life, the book tries to pick up the pieces and I think in the end does a good job of it. Its messy, scary and compelling. It is weird. There is one excert in the book I feel does it justice and struck a cord with me: “How long do we have to just survive? When will we able to live rather than just focus on surviving”? This is a book of survival and for us all that’s a tough ride, one worth going on with these characters though no matter where it takes you. Be ready.

Earthlings is a dark novel about what it takes to survive and how to rebel as an outsider in Japanese society, with black comedy and shocking scenes that will likely divide readers. The book opens with eleven-year-old Natsuki, who believes she can do magic thanks to the help of a hedgehog toy from another planet and spends her summers with her cousin Yuu, who believes that he's an alien who will one day find a spaceship and leave Earth. Underneath, the realities of their lives, including mental, physical, and sexual abuse, linger, and the cousins are parted. When Natsuki grows up, she lives in a marriage of convenience, trying to hide her past trauma, but she and her husband seek to escape what they call the Factory, or the regimented society expecting people to become good workers and have children, and to leave this behind, they are reunited with Yuu, to take whatever steps are necessary.

This is a novel about trauma, but not necessarily in a redemptive way: instead, it is a look at surviving trauma and defying societal norms in ways which may seem shocking, horrifying, or ridiculous. Murata uses this to make the book deeply uncomfortable at times, which works well to get across how hard it is for Natsuki to survive and escape in different ways, and this is tempered with a kind of black comedy, particularly around the ways the main characters frame themselves as magical or alien, especially as the novel builds to its conclusion. Particularly the earlier chapters around Natsuki's childhood can be difficult to read due to the abuse she faces and the ways her coping mechanisms and trauma are framed (the later part of the book has more body horror than abuse), so it's definitely a book for people to go into aware of some of the content warnings.

Gripping and horrifying in ways similar to other novels, Earthlings cleverly combines the fantastical with the terrible to explore effects of childhood trauma and the desire to escape from the society you see yourself trapped in. It's not a light read, but it has a feeling of a cult favourite, whilst also looking at the complexity of mental health and survival.

My rating: 2.5/5
If my taste was different, my rating would be: 4/5


I need to say that the author was insanely creative in the world-building. I am dumbfounded and extremely shock. I can't even believe what I had just read! It's a beast! This emoji 🤮 described accurately what I just felt afterward.

Earthlings are not for the weak. Certainly, it's not suitable for younger readers. As it touches about mental illness in a bizarre way that you'll find discomfort and restlessness, perhaps creepy and unrealistic. It also contains plenty of graphical descriptions of immorality that you'll find so distracted and alarming.

It's best for me to describe this book as a heavy read. Not one that you'll pick for fun, at all. Nonetheless, if you find everything that I mentioned above as something not worth mentioned, then give it a read. Perhaps you'll find it a great eye-opening.


Thank you so much Netgalley and the publisher for approving my request to read this book.

The first chapters of this novel introduce us to 11-year old Natsuki. A sensitive girl, she is verbally abused by her mother and older sister, but things get markedly worse when she is sexually exploited by one of her teachers. This paedophiliac abuse is explicitly described in a revoltingly graphic scene which would probably be cut if this book were a movie.

Natsuki has her survival mechanisms. She clings to Piyyut, a toy hedgehog which, she imagines, is an alien from planet Popinpobopia who has come to Earth to give her magical powers. Another source of consolation is her family’s yearly visit to her grandparents’ house in a remote mountain village, where her aunts, uncles and cousins converge for the festival of Obon. Natsuki looks forward to her meetings with her cousin Yuu with whom she shares her woes. Yuu is understanding, as he also has his own problems, including a borderline-abusive relationship with his needy mother. For his mum, Yuu is an alien, and both Natsuki and Yuu himself seem to accept this at face value.

Fast forward a couple of decades and we find Natsuki living in a chaste marriage of convenience with her husband Tomoya. Both Natsuki and Tomoya settle for this peculiar arrangement in order to escape the strictures of what they call “the Factory”. The “Factory” refers to conventional Japanese society with its strict mores and pressures, especially on females to marry and have children. When Tomoya learns of Natsuki and Yuu’s childhood ‘alien’ fantasies, he embraces them with a naïve enthusiasm. Soon, Tomoya, Natuski and Yuu team up to create their own ‘alien commune’ in the mountain home of Natsuki’s grandparents. As they struggle to defiantly assert their own moral code, things get increasingly weird and surreal.

At its best, Earthlings is a darkly funny satire about society in general, and Japanese mores in particular. For instance, there’s a wickedly funny scene where the hapless would-be rebel Tomoya, eager to “make a statement”, visits his brother to propose an incestuous relationship, provoking a hilarious overreaction from the rest of the family. On the strength of such scenes, Earthlings would have worked brilliantly as a black comedy. More often than not, however, the novel comes across as merely gratuitous.

The fact is that for all its contemporary feel, what Murata is trying to do is not particularly new. The idea of the individual who takes on the rigid moral code of bourgeois society by breaking its taboos was a recurring one in the Romantic era. Goethe’s Young Werther, fictional rock star of his age, is just one of many examples. Looking at the literature of my country, Malta, this was also a theme dear to the modernist authors of the Sixties, whose novels often featured rebellious youths ostracized in a conservatively religious country. A case in point is Frans Sammut’s Samuraj a novel inspired by Japanese traditions. Samwel, the novel’s main character, struggles against what he feels are the stifling confines of a traditional, rural Mediterranean village, performing a hara-kiri in the final pages in homage to an “alien” culture at odds with local mores.

The problem Murata faces is that in our permissive times, very few taboos remain (at least in literature), and the few which are still considered “taboos” generally have good reason for being such. To jolt a jaded modern reader, Murata has to try hard. Perhaps too hard for my tastes.

Thank you to Granta and NetGalley for an advanced copy of Earthlings.

This was such a rollercoaster of a book, the minute I thought I knew what was going on there was another plot twist and Murata would take it in a completely different direction. This made for a really interesting reading experience, I started the first page and before I knew it hours had passed and I had finished - this is one of those books that you cannot stop reading that you read it all in one sitting.

I had read Murata's previous book the Convenience Store Woman and not enjoyed it as much as I hoped and wanted to give this book a try. Based on the blurb I thought it sounded just strange enough to keep my attention and goodness me I was not wrong. Murata's writing makes all the bizarre elements in this book seem completely plausible and I loved every minute of reading it.

I would highly recommend this to every, suspend your disbelief for a few hours and just indulge in a brilliantly strange piece of fiction.

1.

Because it’s the anxieties that are you think aren’t anxious that are the most anxious anxieties because any sight of the end of the day is a deep and cleansing breath - a pleasant read ( but some of the magic realism [?] felt like I was watching some weird old CBBC programme)

2.

When the epidemic of selfishness hits so hard that you’re so alienated and anxious that you decide that you’ll just become and start a commune

PLOT TWIST - it’s actually about aliens on earth

3.

This is like watching an animated acid trip but you accidentally got given ketamine

4.

Forget CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN the books you are looking for is the one where a bunch of ‘outsiders’ get all anxious and alienated because of the current ongoing EPIDEMIC OF SELFISHNESS and slowly allow their bodies to be taken over by aliens until it’s the last third of the novel and it’s was a TAKASHI MIIKE film all along! Classic MIIKE!!

I was a real fan of Convenience Store Woman when it came out, and the thing I loved most about it was the intricacies of the world created by Sayaka Murata. Every detail felt considered and the images she created were vivid and rich. Similarly, Earthlings is a very short, very vivid novel. I love Murata's use of language, particularly her descriptions. I believed in this world immediately and felt very invested in Natuski's story.

I have heard that people have been calling Earthlings the "followup" to CSW, however, I would say that Earthlings has a darker plotline, despite the fact half the book takes place in childhood. The exploration of identity within society is something that links both novels, but I feel that Murata has reached a new level with this one. I don't think everyone who enjoyed CSW will take as well to this one, but I certainly did! I can't wait to read what she writes next!

This book was magical from the get go. A quick, lovely gem that immediately made me feel immersed in a Studio Ghibli plot - the characters were painted in bright colours! I cannot wait for a physical copy and I cannot wait to have a whole single title display of it in my shop when it comes out!

I loved Convenience Store Woman, it really was a delight to read and I was excited to read Earthlings. I was hoping for a dose of the charm that flowed through that book.

Earthlings was a bit of a shock to the system, The general gist of the story, a young woman who doesn’t want to conform to societies norms came through but how she gets from being a child besotted with her cousin to a woman in a loveless marriage is a bit of a disturbing one.

I know some people will love this book but I am being honest that the use of child abuse, incest, parental abuse and cannibalism made me a little uncomfortable and it shocked me a little as I’m not usually affected that way by books.

However reading between the lines, the story of Natsuki our protagonist as she grows up is heartbreaking, she has to deal with some horrific things but she herself is the cause of some of them.

Her childhood retreat features heavily and that has to be my favourite thing in the book, a beautifully described hilltop house full of history.

Thank you to the publishers for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Just like in her previous novel, Sayaka Murata focuses on the story of a misfit - but she goes much further and deeper than in Convenience Store Woman. This is the disturbing story of Natsuki, whom we meet when she is a child - beaten by her mother, molested by a teacher, lonely and unloved. It is outrageous - you get the whole package: sexual abuse, violence, incest, murder, cannibalism... But in a strange way it was also very touching. You get the feeling that despite the main characters' crazy beliefs and actions, you understand them and forgive them, somehow, because was happened to them is truly horrifying.
It is a beautiful, sad tale of abuse and coping with abuse as an adult. I loved the writing and the character's longing for the mountain village of her ancestors.

I had previously read and really liked Sayaka Murata’s ‘Convenience Store Woman’ (CSW) so I was really forward to reading ‘Earthlings’. I don’t want to give away any plot points but definitely be prepared for an exhilarating read with many dark moments.

In ‘Earthlings’ Sayaka Murata returns in full force in a novel that explores the patriarchal, heteronormative and class structures of contemporary Japan. These themes will be familiar to those who have already read CSW. However, this time the author explores the more disturbing aspects of these themes. There is still some of the beautiful and quiet introspection of CSW but what really makes this a fascinating and unputdownable read is the tone of urgency and rage that courses through the novel. I still haven’t figured out whether I like the ending (I think that is going to be really divisive) but this was definitely an unexpectedly engrossing and enjoyable read.

With thanks to the publisher for the free review copy in exchange for my honest and unedited feedback.

content warnings: sexual abuse, incest, parental abuse, murder, cannibalism, suicide attempt

After reading Convenience Store Woman, I was excited to read another Sayaka Murata book. Earthlings is another story about subverting the expectations laid out by society. However, I did feel it lacked some of the charm that, for me, made Convenience Store Woman such a delight.

In Earthlings we follow the character of Natsuki, as she spends Summers with her extended family in the mountains of Nagano where she has a bond with her cousin Yuu. As Natsuki deals with a series of traumatic events, she copes by imagining that she and Yuu are aliens and they can leave Earth once they find their spaceship. As an adult, Natsuki holds on to this belief and marries for convenience so that she appears to conform to societal expectations. Eventually Natsuki, her husband, and Yuu decide to escape the confines of society and live in their own way.

Earthlings is certainly a unique story. It is in some ways an excellent coming of age tale; Natsuki uses the belief that she is not human as a refuge from the trauma she has been through. Through her magic power she is able to protect herself from the world.

Earthlings is a powerful and often engrossing story but it is not an easy read. The graphic depictions of abuse (and particularly the sexual abuse) were very disturbing. Personally, this stopped me from being able to really enjoy the story- though I am sure many readers will love this book.

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.