Another masterpiece by Murata. Unsetteling and deeply human at the same time. One of the finest writers at the moment.

I was super excited to read this having loved Murata’s other stuff but found it to be less nuanced and compelling than Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings. The central ideas are intriguing and challenging as we’d expect from Murata: children are raised communally, traditional family units and even traditional couples no longer exist. Sex is considered old fashioned and just plain weird and the idea of a husband and wife having sex with each other is properly icky. However, I found the writing of these ideas more repetitive than I’d normally expect from Murata which made sense when I read that this book is actually earlier work of hers than CSW and Earthlings.

Definitely worth reading if you’re a fan of Murata’s particular style of weird, but if you’re looking for an entry into reading Murata I’d point you towards CSW instead.

Side note: if you’ve been following International Booker this would make quite a nice companion read to Under the Eye of the Big Bird.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! Although this is the ‘new’ Sayaka Murata in English, it’s actually one of the earliest she wrote and I do think that’s evident. I didn’t find Vanishing World as compelling from the get go as I have with her others, but it did pull me in more as I reached the second half. It’s got her usual themes of picking apart modern society, with marriage and reproduction on the chopping block. In this world, sex with your spouse is seen as incest, and couples take lovers (sometimes fictional) instead, as well as use artificial insemination to have babies. I got a bit tired of the repetition of the MC’s relationships with various anime characters.

But the second half where the MC and her husband move to ‘Experiment City’ kicks the weirdness up a notch. All babies are everyone’s babies, kept in a sort of communal holding pen where people go to spend time with them - utterly bizarre. It’s not a Murata novel if you don’t say ‘what the fuck’ out loud at least once. I certainly was by the ending, but I really don’t know how I felt about the end - apart from icky.

Not as strong as her others, including the collection of short stories she has out in English.

A quietly unsettling and provocative story set in the near future where science has redefined intimacy, relationships, and family. Marriage is a sibling like relationship and sex with your spouse is deemed "incestuous". Extra marital relationships are the norm and encouraged. The world-building is imaginative and disorienting in the best way, challenging norms and expectations.

The tone shifts dramatically in the final third of the book—intense and potentially disturbing for some. Vanishing World that lingers, and I’m still processing how I feel about it.

Reading books in translation can often be simple, but it becomes much more difficult when there are different societal norms and practices in the home country. Sayaka Murata's Vanishing World, as translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is a tricky one to translate because the future Japan it exists in has changed with regard to how core family relationships are organised. We follow our lead character Amane through her life, from her natural birth - which in this society is unusual as most people are artificially inseminated. Indeed it is a little frowned upon to have actual sex at all, and certainly as Amane grows up it becomes increasingly taboo for married couples to have any sort of physical relationship. At the same time people fall in love all the time, though often just with fictional anime characters, often designed to fulfil that role. As she grows up Amane describes her first love - Lapis - a lead in an anime who she has her first sexual relationship with (though much discussion is had about it just being masturbation). She later finds a fellow fan, who she has her first actual physical relationship with, though since everyone is fitted with contraceptive devices it is hard to say how much of the copulation is as we would understand it. As she grows older we see her negotiate this new world and her own place in it, she has more physical relationships but also carries around a purse full of her 40 other lovers, fictional creations. She gets married and they try to get pregnant, all whilst having separate love relationships.

Part of the translation issue, and this is very cultural, is to what degree Amane is unusual. She occasionally mentions feeling out of place, and has female friends who find her excitement in physical sex, weird. There is also the degree to which this scenario leads out of the current Japanese relationship crisis, where working women do not find their male counterparts attractive. There is certainly a homophobic aspect to Japanese society that is embedded here, as marriages are not meant to be the form of procreation, the lack of same sex marriages seems anachronistic (it is discussed as the possible end of any kind of family whatsoever). The final third of the book finds Amane and her husband moving to the experimental city of Chiba, where pregnancy is decided by a computer, which inseminates all those eligible at the same time - men and women alike (one of the experiments is a male womb). Once parents in Chiba give birth they give up their children to the society birthing centre, and the city is full of children who call everyone "mother" and are fundamentally co-parented by the city. This is a big step, has shades of Brave New World about it and is seen to be equitable and the future. Amane likes the solitary aspect of it, but has other issues about her physical urges which suddenly shifts the last twenty pages or so into an actual horror story.

Vanishing World is a fascinating work, even with its somewhat unsettling coda. It feels very Japanese, its talk of romantic relationships with fictional character seems to push Ginny Tapley Takemori into some tricky areas in translation, it feels like this is an idea that is already concurrent in Japanese society. The scenario presented seems very speculative to my eyes, but possibly not so much in modern Japan, where ideas about the point of family and relationships may be at a different stage. I'm not sure the final lurch into horror does it any favours, though it certainly gives it a more sensationalist denouement (there is a "ban this sick filth" aspect to it). Robust and thought-provoking.

This is, I think, more speculative fiction than dystopian. The ‘Vanishing World’ that the author describes is one where romantic love and sex is not favoured. The new world where our main character Amane lives is one where sex doesn’t happen - in fact it is thought of as being gross. And marriage is purely platonic - if a husband and wife do have sex, that is incest. The marriage is for family - for children. But these children are conceived through artificial insemination. However, affairs are encouraged! In fact affairs are considered normal - husband and wives will sometimes invite their respective lovers to dine with them. But these are lovers not in the way that we understand lovers. These love affairs are platonic also - if they are with ‘real’ people, because a lover can also be a fictional character. Mangas, movies and even books are designed with characters that the readers will fall in love with. But returning to Aname, she was born because her parents went against the ‘norm’ and had sex. She also likes the physical and has to encourage her real lovers in the act - they don’t know what to do and when they do they don’t like it! This is perhaps a commentary on the falling birth rate in Japan and the way that Japanese women are rejecting their traditional gender roles. Aname and her husband move back to Chiba which has now been renamed Experiment City which is a utopian place where there is no marriage, where there is a lottery to choose who gets inseminated - there is no barrier as artificial wombs have been created so older women and even men can become pregnant- and this happens on on specific day so all the children are born at the same time. These children are raised communally - all the adults are Mothers and all the children are Kodomo-chans and they all dress alike, they have the same hairstyle, they all look alike. And in this way the author challenges what is normal because for everyone in Experiment City - this is normal. For Aname - does she give up falling in love and having physical sex or does she follow the new normal? It is a novel that challenges family, marriage and even the miracle of birth. A strange read.

In a future world sex has become extinct; deemed to be a relic of the past when a woman wants to become pregnant she is artificially inseminated. Amane feels like she is not like everyone else; she still has sex with her lovers and and she is the product of the ultimate taboo, her conception is natural and not artificial. As she grows older society takes more steps to change the family unit and as Amane is pulled deeper into the changes must determine what she truly wants.

As ever Sayaka Murata's novels are thought provoking and strange and Vanishing World was no different. A strange but intriguing take on the role of the family and what society could look like in in the future. 3.5 Stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

If at this point of her literary career you still don't know what you're letting yourself in for with a Murata novel -- good luck.

Once again Sayaka Murata drops you in the middle of a world where everything is different. The concept of family and life and how it is explored is so unique and keeps you reading.

I never go into a book by this author knowing exactly what I am going to get, and I'm going to be honest when I finished this book and took what I just read in, I knew I had once again read something that was going to leave me feeling many things, disturbed being kinda one of them I'm not going to lie to you.

All the characters in this book are cracking up in different ways from the society they are living in. Amane because of the pressure around her to be a mother, Saku in trying to find love but knowing that the society around him no longer respects that and her mum because she is used to a society that no longer exists and raised Amane to be part of but she rejects from what she has seen around her.

Each book by this author I read, she pushes taboos and makes me feel morally wrong for reading this book and maybe that's something to say about this author, she challenges the norms but yeah don't go into this book expecting normal - in fact the abnormal is normal and the normal abnormal is very much the case here. Following three incredibly different people who are trying to find their life.

please check trigger warnings before you read this unlike what I did.

(I got a copy to review via Netgalley for honest review).

A book that was clearly written (in 2015) in response to contemporary Japan, with its famous low marriage and birth rates, set in a world where sex is "vanishing" and would be considered incest within a marriage. This concept also works for me in the current day where we are seeing a rise in puritanical views among young people (+ i'm looking at you, fandom spaces...).

The writing and plot of this book didn't particularly work for me, beyond the concept. I kept seeing glimpses of commentary on the nuclear family, celebrity/idol-type fan culture, and the role that the patriarchy plays in family structures, but with very little depth and development.

I think this is because most of the narration happens through either dialogue or "statement"-type thoughts from our main character, both of which are quite repetitive throughout. Our main character also does multiple 180s with her attitude towards society, with no build up or explanation as to why opinions have changed. She makes some very questionable, "shocking" decisions towards the end of the book that seem to come from nowhere. I wanted more explanations about the world, but I think this may just be normal in Murata's work. In particular I would have liked to know more about this change as a societal attitude vs government mandate. There was also a mention of queer relationships being not allowed, which was conspicuous in that it was mentioned but not at all expanded upon. Why are they frowned upon?

This book has, however, given me a lot to think about, and the entire reading experience was an interesting one as someone who is asexual. Cool concepts, execution just did not work for me.

Stages of reading Vanishing World:

ONE - read the synopsis. Decide that it sounds completely absurd, but also that it might be worth it, given the absolute CULT FOLLOWING the author has. (I've not read Convenience Store Woman.

TWO - sprain a muscle from rolling your eyes so hard. This world IS absurd. Get a headache from wondering if this is truly meant to be satire? Is this really what people think the world is becoming - is this REALLY a critique of the author's home country?

THREE - start adjusting to the ridiculousness. Manage to suspend disbelief. Start seeing parallels with Brave New World. Start to think you maybe have an idea where this is going.

FOUR - reach part three. Finally, the bit you’ve been waiting for. It’s eerie and uncomfortable. But good literature is supposed to make you uncomfortable, right? This might become a book you love to discuss, even if it doesn’t become a five star read. What is normal, right?

FIVE - holy heck NO. This was going kinda sorta okay until SPOILER ALERT [ she had sex with a child?! One who might be her child - at least in a weird, adopted, everyone-is-their-mother kind of way. Also she is keeping her own mother as a pet. And also she doesn’t have any qualms about what is basically her paedophilic adventure with the child. (hide spoiler)] NOPE.

I really was starting to think Vanishing World offers a segue to discussing questions of the evolution of humans and their families. Also, it was allowing for a good absurdist giggle. But then the end happens, and you can say what you want, but I am not okay with it. There is shock value and then there is this and it DOES NOT SERVE the novel. I am not okay.

To people who five-starred this: DID YOU READ THE END?!

Thank you to Sayaka Murata, Granta Publications, and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Ugh, the premise was so interesting but the writing style is awful. I’m not sure if it’s issues with translation but it’s flat, jarring, and extremely simplistic. I would get a better sentence structure out of a Biff n Chip book.

The plot was repetitive and I didn’t care about any of the characters. Unfortunate dnf.

Well, if you've read any Sayaka Murata before, you know that "weird" is the baseline . This was pretty weird. At first I thought the comparison to the declining birth rates and voluntary celibacy in modern Japan were too obvious, but as the story progressed through time it really got me thinking about "normal" and what that means, and how much of itnis shaped by what society dictates "normal" is. Sayaka Murata laid out a potential slippery slope for the future, and the ending pushed the logic to the most extreme conclusion, as she often does. I dont think its as shocking as say, Earthlings, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Thank you to Netgalley and Granta publications for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A weird novel about a world where sexual relationships are not needed anymore. A very near future however with huge changes to what we know. Can be read as an alternate history story where the world, specially japan, diverted from the rest of the world. The novel raises questions about being a parent, about relationships, social experiments and much more. Really enjoyed this one!

I’m saddened by this rating because I love weird dystopia as a genre, and I’m deeply invested into any media discussing the sociological impact of tech advancement and how customs, relationship dynamics and roles evolve with it - especially with Japan experiencing these shifts in real time - but I really, really, did not find the execution enjoyable nor the story fleshed out enough to be this long, and this book was so short. Repetitive to an extreme level and oddly juvenile in its exposition, I really wish it would have done something else with the concept at its core than just making me read the word “family” multiple times per paragraph per page or spoon-feeding me the author’s intentions for this story. And that ending? Questionable if not problematic, at best.

I leave this book hoping to find a work of fiction able to give justice and the exploration its premises deserved somewhere else.

I’m not discouraged to pick up from this author’s bibliography again in the future, but this one was a no for me.

Rated 1.5 stars.

I've read a couple of Sayaka Murata books in the past, and while for the most part I thought they were interesting they often veer into the weird and nonsensical. Vanishing World follows this same trend, with a story that looks at a mix of technology, societal pressures, gender roles and sex. And it's an odd read. Both in plot and pacing. For a short book this took me a while to get through, and while I thought the themes were thought provoking and timely, I just found the execution to be rather clinical and devoid of deeper emotional depth. Amane just felt a little disconnected, as though she was solely focused on sex and sex alone, which made it difficult to connect with her.

Some thoughtful observations, but I think this was just a little bit too odd for a basic girl like me.

"Nobody knows what makes family different from strangers anymore. In reality, we’re already lost.”

After having read "The Convenience Store Woman", which I can only refer to as a strangely odd but enticing read, I was pleased to hear that Murata would be returning with a new release this year, and I was looking forward to another odd tale.

In Vanishing World, we are introduced to our protagonist, Amane. Amane finds comfort in her other-worldly lovers (anime characters) & her real life lovers, but when it comes to her husband, he is simply family & refuses to engage in inc*st with her husband. Yes, you read that right. In this new era, the act of copulation has phased out, along with the original notion of family. With pregnancies only taking place via insemination, the concept of family had 'evolved'. In other words, the world as we currently know it had begun to disappear.

This book was really strange, if 10 is the peak, this book was 100. As odd as it was, I did like the reflections on the themes.

It did make me question the core reasons why many of us strive to create a family. Is it due to family expectation? Conditioning from society? This story also includes an experimental city where both men & women are eligible for pregnancy, however the children post birth belong to the city, where they are treated by The Mother's equally. I found this aspect really interesting, as it made me think of "it takes a village to raise a child." And how beneficial it may be for children to be loved by all.

There were lots of other key take aways in regards to maternal expectations, love & just, hyper sexuality, marriage & relationships.

Despite this book being quite a short read, it felt as though the middle of the book could have been the ending. I would have much preferred that, as the ending was very disturbing.

Overall, this was an interestingly odd read. Would I recommend, only if you are used to strange fiction.

Vanishing World is a story set in a near-future where sex has become disgusting to most people and children are almost all created by artificial insemination.

It’s all very strange and yet internally consistent and believable. Lots of food for thought here as well as an interesting story.

This was 4⭐ until the very ending, where it dropped to 1⭐. It didn't need to happen, for the whole book was already disturbing and I feel like it took away from the meaningful commentary and made it too... shocking? I don't even know how to describe it.

After "Convenience Store Woman" and "Earthlings" my expectations were very high, but unfortunately "Vanishing World" didn't live up to them. I will be looking to read Murata's next book after how much I liked these two, but this particular title dimmed down my enthusiasm.

Thank you to NetGalley, Granta Publications and Sayaka Murata for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.