4.5 stars
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

🧠 My thoughts
As always, her book needs an open mind to read. This author keeps having such original ideas that I don't know how she comes up with all of this. On the surface, she wants to provoke us, make us upset, and disgusted. However, I always feel that her books have so many deeper levels and grander ideas that make us think over and over again. She always has her way to make you ask what's the definition of "normalcy", what's normal anyways? What's the norm, and why should we be restricted by it?

The book also raises difficult questions like what is love, relationship, sex, gender and marriage to us? It was disturbingly brilliant. She asks questions but doesn't give any clear answer to tickle our brains, make us think, and analyze. <spoiler>My interpretation of one of the points of the story is the reality of Japan, their dating culture, and the fact that people want to have sex with sex dolls and unreal people</spoiler>. The ending wasn't a surprise for me after reading Earthlings, and that was disturbing. Up until now, I'm still thinking about the ending and the whole book itself.

Thanks NetGalley, Granta Publications publisher for a great advance copy of the book in exchange for my honest review!

Sayaka Murata is one of my favourite authors and has been for a long time. I would read anything she writes including her shopping list. The way she is able to evoke such strong emotions from me with so few words and truly put in the shoes of her characters (often to my horror) is a skill that I don't come across too often anymore.

I think with declining broth rates and an increasing population closing to not have children this book touches on a lot of politically current and very sores topics for many people, but that's what makes it so excellent. Sayaka Murata poses her questions through a dystopian but very plausible sense that doesn't seek to judge her audience, but rather make them think and reflect on their own opinions on the topic as well as allowing them to see from an alternative view point. She is excellent at societal norms as we have seen with her other works and challenging them, if we were raised a different way with a different set of opinions presented to us would we think that this worlds normal if horrid and grotesque? probably. but that's the point that's being made here. Few books make you think as deeply about society and your own view of the world in so few words as this one.

It's a true masterpiece as always and should be read by everyone. I will forever be singing her praises to anyone that will listen.

'I was in a sex education class in the fourth year of elementary school when I discovered that I had been conceived by an abnormal method.'

Sometime in the future, and Amane discovers her family's secret: in a world where everyone is born as a result of artificial insemination, her parents had in fact conceived her the natural way after falling in love. As she grows into an adult and navigates this complex world, Amane finds herself torn between desire and simple physical satisfaction, marrying a man named Saku and trying to be a 'normal' couple. They hear of a town called Eden or Experiment City, where men can grow wombs and children are raised collectively. Moving there, Amane's life changes forever.

This is Sayaka Murata doing what she does best, imagining a dystopian future Japan and pushing it to the extreme. It is terrifying and involving at the same time, and Amane's journey is one that draws the reader in right to the astonishing end.. One of the best writers around, this is a fantastic addition to her books that have been translated into English. Definitely a must-read. 5 stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

Really loved the idea and concept of this book, but the execution unfortunately felt a bit simplistic/surface level. The world building felt very repetitive and over explanatory at times, taking on quite an all tell no show approach, which is a pet peeve of mine (although I'm not sure if maybe at times this was to do with the translation).

The book I think got more interesting in the final part, with the themes and commentary really coming through here, but the switch up also felt very quick. I did enjoy the overall book, but I just kept wanting it to do a bit more,

Sayaka Murata is one of those authors I simultaneously look forward to and dread reading. She has a gift for describing feelings and situations that are familiar and uncomfortable, and then pushing them to the limits of what they can be.

Vanishing World deals with themes that are universal, with the declining birth rates and people's losing desire to have sex, in a world that becomes more and more absurd as the story progresses. The world that we know, the world that the protagonist seems to so strongly cling to as well, is vanishing, and what is left might be more terrifying than we think.

I loved the way the story built, and, reminiscent of Earthlings, the plot goes haywire at the last part of the book. It made me a lot more uncomfortable than I will ever admit, it got stuck in my head for days and weeks after I finished it. It did leave me with a feeling of slight dissatisfaction in the end, though, and maybe that's because I would have liked it to end differently. But just like how the world the protagonist and her mother grew up in is vanishing, maybe what we perceive as 'right', 'wrong' or even 'appropriate' also ends up vanishing, and that was the point all along.

I truly can't wait to see what else Murata's ingenious pen will write up next.

Welcome to an alternate Japan where marital sex is taboo, all children are conceived via artificial insemination… and a new experimental city promises to reinvent parenthood. Sayaka Murata takes her exploration of social norms even further in Vanishing World—a disturbing, sometimes absurd, yet consistently fascinating novel.

We follow Amane, conceived through “natural” sex—a scandalous anomaly in her hyper-sanitised society. Caught between desire, disgust, and a need to conform, she tries to fit into a world that has erased sexuality in the name of progress, eventually joining a utopian community where every adult is a “Mother” to all children.

Blending social satire with intimate dystopia, this novel questions our relationship to bodies, gender, and family. At times uneven, but bold and unsettling, Vanishing World cements Murata as a radically unique voice in contemporary literature.

I never thought that I would read a book one day that discusses bodily fluids in such a detailed way like Vanishing World does. Also, imagine a man being pregnant and having an artificial womb outside of the body like a sack attached to his belly. I think this book is hilarious and absurde in the best way possible and I had a great time with it. But I can see how it is definitely not for everyone. The concept of the book was well realized, only the ending dragged a bit.

An excellent concept - tackling dropping birth rates and the advent of a society removed from traditional romantic and sexual relationships - that fails on multiple levels in its execution. Murata's fiction is intentionally divisive, but where in the past this has felt savvy and conversation starting, here it simply feels obnoxious.

This is especially true of the ending - I imagine that shock value was the aim, but it just feels crude for the sake of it. A shame, as there is definitely something great here, buried by its poor execution.

Another fascinating work by Sayaka Murata, ably translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Utterly novel writing style hooks you straight in.

Murata does not write for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Set in a futuristic world where artificial insemination is the norm and the concept of sex as love is being eradicated, our protagonist Amane is one of the last known people to be conceived of through physical procreation. Throughout the novel, Amane battles between the instincts she was instilled with as a child and the expectations of the new world as it advances in scientifically and societally. This novel had me debating the morality of the modern family structure and whether a different world is inherently "wrong" - and what that even means. This novel was a mind bender like so much of Murata's work, with moments of tenderness, laughter, and deep unsettlement that I would not recommend to all.

Weird worlds within weird worlds, no weirder than our own
—
Murata returns with a visceral tale that extrapolates futures many times removed from our own, weird worlds within weird worlds, but no weirder than our own. Imagine a Japan where sex is no longer necessary, in fact, reviled socially, but instead all children are born through IVF. Naturally conceived children are vanishingly rare and perhaps anathema. Amane is one, told by her mother that she was naturally conceived, and although hiding her strange origin, she matures with a curiosity for physical sex, one that her partners remain squeamish about. Unable to conceive with her husband, they move to a new town where both women and men are impregnated by IVF, and where children are raised together and call all adults Mother. Could this be the answer to all of Amane’s dreams of raising her own child?

As in Murata’s other works, the main character who is seen to be ‘wrong’ in the eyes of their nearest and dearest, and therefore society, tries to fit in by whatever means necessary. Amane’s mother is matter-of-fact about her natural/unnatural conception, but society tells her the complete opposite, pushing and pulling Amane in one direction then another, until, like a pressure cooker letting off steam, she and her second husband escape from the strictures of society into a world even more perfectly ordered. However, beware the monkey’s paw: Amane finds that getting what she wants is still bound with conditions that are just too much, another source for wrongness, whichever side of the equation you end up on.

Murata sketches her utopian and dystopian worlds but shines an unflinching light on the squeaky interface of messy human beings against rigid social norms, all the rules and expectations and reactions that seek to rub off the sharp corners and soft edges that humans bear and grow. Murata’s characters come to life when they attempt to attain their dreams within the mazes that they are forced to enter; but their tragedy is that they cannot see the folly before it’s way too late.

A superb four and a half stars

Strange, haunting, and quietly powerful 🌍💭. Vanishing World is everything I adore about Sayaka Murata—thought-provoking, unsettling, and utterly original. Her prose is sparse yet emotionally charged, exploring society, identity, and what it means to belong. The dystopian themes are woven with subtle beauty, and the characters linger in your mind long after finishing. Perfect for fans of speculative fiction with depth and literary brilliance.

In the opening scenes of Murata's dystopian novel, schoolgirl Amane is teased by one of her classmates, who has discovered that Amane's parents conceived her by having sex. As Amane goes on to explain, in the alternate history of the novel's setting, post-WWII technological advances have made artificial insemination common and reliable, and as a result, sex has become first uncommon, and then taboo-ized. Schoolchildren are expected to "fall in love" with fictional characters, mostly from animated shows, whom they refer to as boyfriends and girlfriends. Married couples are matched by personality quiz—with questions like whether they expect to co-sleep, or prefer to cook or clean—purely for the purpose of (artificial) procreation. While married people are expected to have lovers—Amane reports that both her and her husband's lovers attend their wedding—sex is increasingly absent even within those relationships.

All of this is related in blank, sterile prose, with interactions between Amane and her friends and lovers having an almost childlike quality. As one makes one's way through yet another bland, banal expression of satisfaction with how convenient life is in this new, sex-free world, it's hard not to suspect Murata of writing an "if this goes on" screed—perhaps inspired by the growing trend, in Japanese society, of young people who choose to remain unpartnered and childless. But the novel's interest seems less in the shape that its society has taken—a shape that changes several times over the course of Amane's childhood and early adulthood—as in how a society shapes individuals, even without exerting direct force on them. Amane's natural conception is unusual, but not illegal—when she tells people about it as an adult, they are usually nonplussed, not disgusted or condemnatory. Nevertheless, Amane takes on the belief that sex between married partners is wrong, even divorcing her first husband when he tries to initiate it. Amane herself is a bit of a rebel—she has sexual fantasies about her fictional boyfriends, and initiates sex with her real ones. But far from being a story about personal awakening and self-discovery, Vanishing World shows us how even these urges are processed through the framework that Amane has been raised with.

That framework reaches all the way down into language, with Amane explaining to her frustrated mother that of course sex between married partners counts as incest—aren't husbands and wives members of the same family? Later she will insist to her friends that her fantasies about fictional characters are sex rather than masturbation, because they are an act of connection. It's this connection that Amane seems to be seeking in her sexual encounters, rather than physical pleasure. Murata's descriptions of these encounters are vague yet upsetting, as Amane ignores her own and her partners' pain and discomfort to pursue an ideal she doesn't understand. And yet even as Amane seeks to make accommodations with her society's ideas about sex and intimacy, those ideas keep shifting. Having achieved the perfect, sexless marriage, she then observes younger women dismissing the idea of marriage entirely—isn't it weird, they ask, to have a stranger living in your home? Advanced childbearing technologies, including artificial wombs for men, also raise the question of whether the family unit is still necessary. An experimental community arises where citizens—men and women—are impregnated via lottery, with children raised communally. Frustrated by their inability to find physical and emotional satisfaction within the constraints offered to them, but also incapable of considering that those constraints themselves are misguided, Amane and her second husband choose to move there.

The novel's final section, set in this community, shifts fully into a heightened dystopian mode. A particularly disturbing touch are the community's children, known as Kodomo-chan, who are dressed and styled entirely alike, and trained in identical expressions of happiness, affection, and cuteness. All adults in the community are encouraged to think of themselves as these children's mothers, and all the children are treated as identical and interchangeable. Amane and her husband initially plot to maintain some separation from this lifestyle. To stay in contact with each other, carry each other's babies, and raise them together. But the more time they spend around people who devalue those choices, the less important things like family and intimacy seem to them, until they finally drift apart. This leaves Amane with her sublimated, but still present, desire for connection, and in the book's final chapters she commits several horrific acts in pursuit of that desire, all of which she rationalizes within the scheme her society has taught her. The result takes the conformist dystopia in unexpected and disquieting directions, suggesting that in a sufficiently totalizing system, even rebellious individualism can take a monstrous form.

This story had some lovely moments and a premise that really intrigued me. I enjoyed the overall concept and appreciated the author’s unique perspective.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I was so intrigued about the plot of this novel and had been really looking forward to reading it.

However I found it just a bit too weird for me personally and this took over what could have been a more interesting story! I can see this being more suited to other readers who prefer this style though!

Sayaka Murata is one of my favourite authors and I absolutely adored this book! Beautifully written and kept me reading way longer than I should have been! Honestly it’s just perfection!

Sadly i couldn‘t get into Murata‘s latest novel even though I was really excited about this one.
It felt really slow in the beginning and nothing in her story really connected with me..

Humans have evolved past sex. They still get married for the partnership and the financial benefits, but in order to have children, they get artificially inseminated - there's even clinical trials with artificial wombs for men or people who otherwise cannot carry a fetus. To have sex with your spouse is considered incest and most people don't even fall in love with other people anymore, but with characters from fictional works. Amane is different though. Concieved herself by sex between her parents, despite all her efforts to not turn out like her mother, she falls in love with real people and has the desire to have sex with them,
This was such an interesting and compelling read! Short, strange and so well written I could barely put it down. Sayaka Muratas clean storytelling and character voice made this book so much more than a sci-fi exploration of childbearing and family. I really liked Amanes point of view and the ending was very very surprising but not less on point than the rest of the book. Looking forward to my next Sayaka Murata!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced reader's copy and the opportunity to this early. Review has been posted on Waterstones and Goodreads.

3.5 / 5 | Arc provided by Netgalley

The beauty in Sayaka Murata’s commentary is that she has such a distinct method of exploration that has no equal (at least from what I’ve been able to find). Having only recently discovered her work this past year via her novel Convenience Store Woman, I was eager to see how her style of an estranged protagonist attempting to blend in with a world they see as strange would serve her other, more challenging and stranger narratives.

Vanishing World further establishes this method of commentary, placing the protagonist in the position of alien in a world where children are created through artificial insemination by having her created through the traditional way – seen in the novel as a great transgression. Moreover, she enjoys love and sex, both with real and nonreal people, something that places her in many discussions with classmates, colleagues and lovers throughout the novel.

The world of this novel wishes to explore the rather fragile standings of society and its views on gender, family/community, and sex, but I found while such discussions were certainly present they failed to conclude much beyond the concept of the collapse of gender for the sake of the demolishing of sexual liberty and desire in order to return to a world before Eve at the apple - in other words, a return to purity and a rejection of deviancy.

In addition to this, the novel ghosts over an interesting discussion around conformity and the gradual deterioration of individual wants and desires, though like its commentary on gender and society’s need for purity it only manages to scratch the surface of the topic. In fact, the only topic I’d say it stumbles into in a deeper way is the existence of non-sexual relationships. Yes, they’re backdropped by a society desperate to limit sexual activity and push people into celibacy, but the relationship between the protagonist and her second husband is a wonderful addition to the novel’s otherwise downward spiral exploration of it’s other themes.

The novel was still entertaining, in spite of it’s rather surface level attempts to prove it’s point, and I would argue it does open up the possibility for further discussions around the topics of purity culture, the concept of a family unit within our current world, and the clinginess and potential collapse of gender roles. However, it’s failure to properly conclude these ideas beyond the initial sewing of the seed means it pales in comparison to Convenience Store Woman.