The world's what we make it, right? Even if it's just us, on our own - with the whole world against us.
Diary of a Void
by Emi Yagi
Genre: Contemporary
About: Shibata's sick. She's sick of working late hours, of cleaning up after the men in the office, of making the clients coffee. She's sick of this being all there is and a dark apartment to go home to. So one day she doesn't tidy away the coffee cups. Instead she tells her boss she's sick. As in morning sickness. As in pregnant. But Shibata is not pregnant and the lie takes her down a path she might never have walked otherwise.
Thoughts
This was weird. Good weird - intentionally weird. I thought the translation was really good because I loved Shibata's voice. I loved this woman's confidence. She's been forced to do all these menial tasks for men at work but she doesn't pander to anyone. She doesn't try to be liked or to make a man feel comfortable and she's absolutely fine with telling lies. I felt so stressed that her fake pregnancy was going to be discovered by someone but Shibata is completely cool with the situation. She fully commits.
There are probably a lot of clever things that can be said about this novel. About how women are treated in the workforce. How woman are viewed in general. The impact of pregnancy and motherhood. And how absurdly isolated we all are nowadays that such a lie could be held together by the most superficial means. But I think more than going deep into these issues, the novel just makes you feel them. Sometimes in a small way, sometimes in a big way. A lot of the time - when I wasn't sweating bricks over this lie - I was thinking, huh, yeah, life is like that. Which is a really intelligent way of saying that the novel is relatable and I liked what it was saying - or at least, what I was getting from it.
Weeks 32 onwards was a little confused for me. I felt like, as the reader, I was in on the lie leading up to this point, and then the line between fantasy and reality became a bit too blurry for me. But there were some really important moments during this time, such as Hosono's rant; which, if you've been through the newborn stage, especially on the first time, is impossible not to feel the utter rawness of those emotions.
Overall, this will definitely not be for everyone and there were some moments for me that were a bit too jarring. But it's funny and moving, memorable to say the least, and a little freeing to live in the mind of someone as bold as Shibata.
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