Earthlings: A Novel

By Sayaka Murata

From the beloved author of cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, which has now sold more than one million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages, comes a spellbinding and otherworldly novel about a woman who believes she is an alien

Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman was one of the most unusual and refreshing bestsellers of recent years, depicting the life of a thirty-six-year-old clerk in a Tokyo convenience store. Now, in Earthlings, Sayaka Murata pushes at the boundaries of our ideas of social conformity in this brilliantly imaginative, intense, and absolutely unforgettable novel.

As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit in with her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut, who talks to her. He tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. One summer, on vacation with her family and her cousin Yuu in her grandparents’ ramshackle wooden house in the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki decides that she must be an alien, which would explain why she can’t seem to fit in like everyone else. Later, as a grown woman, living a quiet life with her asexual husband, Natsuki is still pursued by dark shadows from her childhood, and decides to flee the “baby factory” of society for good, searching for answers about the vast and frightening mysteries of the universe—answers only Natsuki has the power to uncover.

Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world, and cements Sayaka Murata’s status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780802157027

Reviews for Earthlings

[yuki7onna-681424 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A surreal, dreamlike read about childhoods full of abuse - emotional, mostly, but not exclusively – and how that shapes the future of the people affected. Natsuki is a pensive child who feels she doesn't fit in – into her family as a child, into society and human life as an adult. The childhood friendship/relationship with her cousin Yuu and her family's reaction to an occurence on a summer night affects & alters her whole life. Disconnectedness, aliens, humanity, sexuality, escapism, pressures and expectations of society, family ties gone wrong, fertility, different ways of perception, dreams, murder, detatchedness, pure concepts of life on this planet, delusion, cannibalism all blend together in this brutal disgusting gorgeous gem of a book. Dark, brave, gritty.

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It was difficult to read at times, it was relatable at times, and it was batshit at times. One thing I'll say though: if you find trigger warnings useful, please look them up for this book before picking this up.

[Leandra Fleming · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

TW: Pedophilic sexual abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse, and incest all wrapped up in writing that couldn't keep my attention. Gore used as a shock factor to criticize taboo parts of society.

[J W · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Okay This book gave me goosebumps in every possible way

[Felicia Lee · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I couldnt finish this read. Im sure if you can get past the sexual abuse and emotional abuse, it could be good, i dont know. Just wanna give anyone a heads up in case they get triggered... this is your heads up.

[Temina McCormack · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I mean, honestly it was an uncomfortable read somewhat. So interesting though and what a perspective to see. Worth the read, very different.

[booklove2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Okey, I knew this book would be weird but what the heck did I just read?!?! Wow. When I first saw this book, I knew I would read it based on that cover!  The toy hedgehog!  I gravitated to the book, since I also have a tiny stuffed hedgehog that I'm fond of that I bought in elementary school and is still hanging around today-- it sat near the book while I read it.  That little hedgehog on the cover holds quite a place within the book but luckily the similarities end there between this book and my life.  With a breezy quick writing style, it's easy to fall into this bizarro narrative.  I won't say anything else about it to spoil anything...

[Taffetadear · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I couldn’t look away- at times, because I was riveted and at other times, with the fascination of an onlooker at a car wreck. It’s a must-read.

[write5review · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

From Deep Inner Space

Do you sometimes feel as if you are an alien in this world; that rather than being a part of society, or even wanting to be part of it, you find more comfort in observing it and your maneuvers through it as something of a third-party? And, further, did some trauma in your life, whether it be sibling rivalry or something greater, like sexual abuse, and even more, abuse that you could never reveal to anyone for fear of disbelief, perhaps, worse force you to exist within your inner space?

If so, then you will find Sayaka Murata’s protagonists Natsuki, her cousin Yuu, and her hikikomori husband Tomoya easy to identify with, though their extremism might be a bit much even for you. Murata’s novel encompasses a lot of societal issues, maybe some of them unique to Japanese culture, but many universal. Among the primary are alienation, rejection (both of and by society), and a seemingly impossible quest for a unique kind of self-actualization and life lived on your own terms. All this, too, in about 250 pages. For the right readers, this will be an amazing experience, while others will simply find it a head scratcher or just plain gross, particularly the last pages.

The novel divides into two parts. In the first, we meet Natsuki as an eleven-year-old girl. She appears typical but her home life is distressing. Her older sister receives her parents’ attention. They are deferential to all the sister’s whims, while criticizing Natsuki constantly, giving her the impression that life would be better without her. Compounding this later is her cram teacher, Mr. Igasaki. He is a university student who teaches part-time and highly regarded by everyone, including her small circle of girlfriends, who consider him sexy. He takes a special interest in Natsuki, grooms her, then sexually abuses her. When she tries telling her mother, her mother accuses her of being difficult. When she tries telling her best friend, she’s met with disbelief and then, worse, the accusation she brought it on herself. She only finds solace with her cousin Yuu, whom she sees at the extended family’s annual Obon festival gathering at the her grandparents’ house in the mountains. Her other solace is escapism in the form of imagining herself from another planet, Popinpobopia, an alien in this world. Her plush toy Piyyut becomes more for you than a comforting toy, but an extension of her inner yearnings, arming her with magical powers allowing her to resist the unpleasantness of the real world, and then, to carry out an act of revenge. Yuu, her soulmate, also suffers alienation issues, and they form a marriage pact that culminations in an act landing them both in serious trouble, with lifelong consequences.

The novel jumps years ahead in the second part to when Natsuki is in her early thirties. We find her in a marriage of convenience with Tomoya, whom she met on a specialized website for the hikikomori (a subculture phenomena that has received much attention in Japan). This marriage excludes everything people would consider normal and essential in marriage, but it works for these two aliens. Eventually, she and Tomoya find their way to the mountain home, where she reunites with Yuu, and where the three of them set up a household of sorts, satisfied to be isolated from the world, exchanging ideas on their alienation and their alien world of Popinpobopia. Here ensue some of the strangest extensions of their alienation from a society they refer to as the factory, where regimentation, control, and production, including reproduction, are the keynotes. While for them, their phantasmagoric construction provides ultimate satisfaction, for the outside world it is nothing but incomprehensible horror.

And that’s only the half of it. For the right readers, Earthlings will be quite the experience.

[Tobin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've never been at such a loss for words on my thoughts of a book as I am now. Is this book crazy? Absolutely. However, I have to stress that it's so much more than that. The author has an amazing way with words and is able to convey things in such an unorthodox method it strikes me as absolutely artful.
Before reading this I only ever saw this book described as crazy and while that may be true I don't want the undermine everything else it is. Definitely pick this up for a quick read that will never bore you.

[jjbooklvr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This walks up the line of how far you think you should go, looks at it, and then jumps over it and never looks back. Utterly unique and forces you to look at societal norms in a different way. Not for the squeamish but so worth reading.

[samsattler · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Where do you even begin when you want to describe the experience of reading a book like Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings? I’m a reader who, over a lifetime of reading that spans decades, has read thousands of novels, but Earthlings may just be the most stunningly horrifying one I’ve ever read. Think of the most universal cultural taboos there are, the ones shared across the globe, and it is likely that Murata has made them part of the story she tells in Earthlings about a little Japanese girl who fights so hard not to become part of her country’s “baby factory.” This is a coming-of-age novel like none you have ever read — or will want to read again.Eleven-year-old Natsuki is a misfit whose mother reminds her every day that she is inferior to her sister in all the ways that count. That’s bad enough but, unfortunately, it is not the only kind of abuse that Natsuki suffers. Things gets even worse for her after a handsome young teacher at her school begins to give her private lessons outside normal school hours. So it is little wonder that Natsuki’s best friend, the only one she can confide in, is a plush hedgehog-looking toy she’s named Piyyut who tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia to help her save the Earth. As her mother will make very clear to her, no one else will help Natsuki.Thoroughly traumatized by her childhood experiences, Natsuki grows into exactly the damaged and disturbed young woman she was destined to become. But members of her family, and her few friends, have no idea just how disturbed she really is. Nor do they realize that Natsuki has attracted two kindred souls who are every bit as disturbed as she is — two young men who are as determined as Natsuki not to give in to Japan’s cultural restrictions or the government’s pressure to reproduce for the good of the nation. Bottom Line: That is the gist of the plot of Earthlings, but it is not what makes the novel so horrifying or difficult to read. The real horror, instead, comes from Murata’s detailed and explicit descriptions of the abuses suffered by Natsuki and the ways that she responds to the abuses she suffers. The author uses the same calm, straightforward prose style, almost a clinical approach, throughout the novel no matter what situation she is describing. And, somehow, that makes it all even more horrifying than it already is. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that reading Earthlings requires a strong stomach. Almost despite myself, I had to keep reading this one long enough to see how it would end — and what an ending it turns out to be.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well that was...interesting. First, this book gets all the trigger warnings. If you search out trigger warnings, avoid this one. (childhood abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, violence, cannibalism)Natsuki, the main character in this book, is in many ways very similar to the main character in [book:Convenience Store Woman|38357895]. She has no interest in being a cog of society. As a child--a child who was mentally abused by her mother and sister--she came to believe she did not fit in. As an abused child, she was targeted by a pedophile, and her mother did not believe her. Natsuki got her revenge. As a child, her best friend (and "husband") was her cousin Yuu, who had a strange relationship with his mother and had decided he was an alien.Twenty years later Natsuki is in a marriage of convenience to a man who also does not fit in. All of their parents are happy, though. But when they go to visit Yuu at their grandparents' old place, all three of these 30-somethings decide to drop out of society and hope to get back to their home planet. And then the story gets really disturbing.I very much enjoyed the first half of this novel. The girl who doesn't fit in, the girl who perseveres despite being rejected by her mother and sister. Her and Yuu's friendship may be a bit wierd, but they see each other once a year and are both misfits of a sort. Natsuki's marriage and strange arrangements--fine. People do what they need to do. But when the three of them drop out and, essentially, go feral, I lost interest. Is this an allegory flying over my head? A case of group mental illness? Fungus/bacterial poisoning from the old and stolen food they are eating? I can't really take this seriously without some sort of reasoning/logic. And there isn't any.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Beware. Here be monsters.Don’t let the cutesy childish narrator and idyllic setting of the opening chapter prompt you to let down your guard. This is not an anime for children. What follows will horrify you. Chapter by chapter, it catalogues the worst of whatever you can imagine people doing to each: sexual abuse of a child, murder, incest, brutality, infidelity, revenge, even cannibalism. That said, it does make for curiously compelling reading.The principle protagonist, Natsuki, is first introduced to us as a highly imaginative 11-year-old. She is harshly used by her older sister and her mother. But she seems to have a great deal of inner resources. However, even at this early point her survival mechanism is to dissociate, so much so that it is hard to know what she perceives as real. We see Natsuki at different ages, but increasingly she has to make greater and greater leaps of imagination to make her life bearable. Indeed, by the time we see her as an adult, it is increasingly improbable that she could persist in normal society without being found out. Fortunately she finds someone equally troubled and together they mask their inability to deal with the real world. However, eventually the real world — here often referred to as the “Factory” — catches up with them. And only a further leap into the extreme can result.After the first chapter which was sickly sweet, I found this novel very hard to stomach. But it did have a grinding logic. I don’t think I could recommend to anyone, at least not without the warning with which I began this review.Very grim reading.

[perednia_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Exceptionally absurdist. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

[miss.mesmerized · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Natsuki has never really fit in, her mother favours her sister and tells her constantly that she is a nuisance and good for nothing. When her teacher first touches her inappropriately, her mother does not only not believe her but accuses her of falsely allege misconduct. Thus, she keeps quiet, even when she is assaulted. Her way of coping with the situation is getting mentally detached, she has the impression of leaving her body which helps her to cope. Only her cousin Yuu can understand her, just like she herself, he lives in a complicated family and is convinced not to be an earthling since all the people around him behave strangely and don’t understand him. An incident forces this relationship to break up and to isolate Natsuki and Yuu, only after more than two decades will they meet again and their childhood experiences clearly left their marks on them.“It’s handy having a dumpster in the house. In this house, that’s my role. When Dad and Mom and Kise get so fed up they can’t bear it any longer, they dump everything onto me.”Reading Sayaka Murata's novel really brought me to my emotional limits. Even before the actual abuse by her teacher, seeing the dysfunctional family and the mother's inhuman behaviour towards her daughter is hard to endure. Also her sister who not only does not show any empathy but quite the contrary, actively contributes to Natsuki’s poor state. She is the typical vulnerable child highly at risk of falling prey to molesters. Being beaten by her parents, not experiencing any love or physical attachment, the fact that she is not believed and does not get any help when in need, sadly fits perfectly into the picture.“Before I knew it, I had turned thirty-four, (...) Even after all the time, I still wasn’t living my life so much as simply surviving.”It might seem strange that Natsuki as well as Yuu come to believe that they must be aliens and that they increasingly estrange from the humans around them. However, this is just a psychological trick played by their brain to help them to cope and quite understandable. From a psychological point of view, this is extremely authentically narrated. “It was the out-of-body power. Before I knew what was happening, I had left my body the way I had the day of the summer festival and was watching myself.”There is no relief when they grow up. The society they live in does not allow individuals to live according to their own conception but expects them to function for the majority's benefit and not to step out of line. Finding a matching partner first bring Natsuki the possibility of fleeing her family, yet, it was to be expected that their small bubble was not meant to last.An extremely sad read which definitely is not suitable for everyone. Nevertheless, I'd highly recommend it due to the authentic portray of the effect such experiences can have and to show that quite often victims do not find any help but are even blamed for what happens to them.

[kathl33n-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What a very strange book. Lots of taboo subject matter. The story follows the main character as a 12 year old and then picks up with her as an adult. As in the author's other book, Convenience Store Woman, the main character is very outside the main stream and refuses ( or can't) live life as expected. In this book I think that could have been portrayed without so much of the weird. The over-the-top weird pulled me out of the book and brought me away from the message I think the author was trying to make about societal norms? <- Big question mark there. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advanced copy.

[kitlovestea · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't even know how to rate this. It was so weird and definitely not for the faint of heart. It starts out as a story about kids with unusual coping methods for really horrible situations and ends all kinds of sideways with these kids taking their coping mechanisms into an adulthood where they're wildly maladaptive. The simple prose and the way the character frames her actions makes everything seem perfectly mundane even while the situations a very bleak. It reminds me of Otessa Moshfegh's Eileen, in the sense that you can see that the characters have a rocky relationship to morality (at least human morality).

If you're into delirious trips into slowly mutating human psyches, as told from the perspective of an incredibly unreliable narrator who could use some therapy instead of magical girl manga, this book is for you. I devoured this book in s pro it's of mtself. A Warning to the wise, the features child abuse in all forms, incest, and cannibalism. Take care if you're planning on reading it

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An astonishing tale of survival, disassociation, and social commentary. Meet 3 young people, traumatized, alienated, and trying to survive in a highly organized society. Their collective belief is that they are aliens on earth, trying not to become brainwashed by socially sanctioned expectations to procreate. It is thought provoking and disturbing in its clear attempt to illustrate the inhuman constraints society can impose on life. Murata is highly skilled in the art of creative, socially conscious storytelling. I also was struck by this writer's gifts after reading "Convenient Store Woman". Bizarrely uplifting while also despairing. No small feat in literature!

[mandathestrange · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Survive, no matter what."

Murata's Convenience Store Woman was my favourite read last year, I indulged and finished the book in a single sitting. It was unique and unsettling and spoke to me on many levels. I was prepared for Earthlings to be a tad different but it was absolutely outrageous. I had literally no idea where Murata was heading with it and I freakin' loved it.

I was going to try and devour this one slowly but I finished the book in two glorious sittings. Without giving anything away I particularly loved how Murata dealt with the theme of trauma and the side effect of dissociation. A single trigger warning for this book is almost laughable as it breaks a lot of rules so I wouldn't recommend this if you're not a fan of exploring darker themes and morbid humour.

Murata really pushes the boundaries with this one but I think for my fellow adventurous readers out there, you're going to love it. I hope Murata continues to write in this completely untamed way where nothing is off-limits.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is by Sakaya Murata, who wrote the oddly charming Convenience Store Woman. While both novels share a certain off-beat quirkiness and both feature a protagonist who has difficulty conforming to what modern Japanese society requires of them, Earthlings is a far darker novel.Natsuki loves her family's annual visit to her grandparents' house in the mountains. She gets to spend time with her cousins, especially Yuu, and it's where her parents' clear preference for her sister is less obvious. After buying a small stuffed hedgehog toy, Natsuki decides that he's an alien and he can teach her how to be a witch. This is necessary, since not only is her home a hostile place, her teacher is sexually abusing her. It's only her relationship with Yuu that keeps her going. When that is taken away, Natsuki must find ways to survive in a world that asks that she conform and submit. Despite Natsuki having an imaginative and whimsical approach to the world, this is a dark story that gets darker as the story progresses, heading into Grand Guignol. There's meaty stuff here in how this novel looks at the demands of society and how it pushes people to marry and settle into a marriage within specific parameters that include procreation. Murata is revisiting the themes of Convenience Store Woman, but from a different angle and with more force. Expect to be made uncomfortable.

[modioperandi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Thanks to Netgalley for my ARC.Sayaka Murata has spun a deeply troubling strange and dark novel. The story centers around an abused girl, Natsuki and by turns strange and repulsive Murata tells a tell about coping and fitting in once the ability to cope or deal with life has been shattered by abuse. It is a critique of Japanese culture by that angle it is a critique of capitalism and the sorts of values that it creates within society. However Earthlings does this by means of a story that is all together, as a whole, deeply repulsive. Murtata's main character, the young girl, Natsuki, who grows up into adulthood, has some beautiful passages with and musings and strange coping mechanism to deal with the abuse of every sort set upon her by her parents, a teacher, and society at large.In order to deal with bad things, Natsuki takes refuge in the world of make believe kid magic. She is a magic girl and can even leave her body if necessary. During the summer holidays, in the house of her grandparents, where the whole family appears for the Obon festival, she meets her cousin / friend / lover and they find out that he comes from another planet and will soon be picked up again. Imagination will help the children to deal with what lies ahead. But in the most twisted way possible. This mechanism, that not not adapting, to the world that so often is set against victims of abuse - those who do not adapt to a world that they cannot fathom fitting into is an interesting angle but Earthlings takes it on by way of a story that is like trying to explain to someone what an apple is by way of showing one what a human body does to an apple after it has consumed it. In all this is not a pleasant book. It is not a stunning read and I do not recommend. It has a few interesting passages but they are set against and best by such horrific and troubling turns of events. A lot comes together in this book, but it's not beautiful, not al all, it is not even artful. The passages that struck me as good are good in a way that maybe a drunk person can spin a phrase that is maybe beautiful but it comes by way of an accident of sorts. Or maybe the reason of this book is to repulse and be a thing that sits, writhing, under your skin.