#grantabooks

[jennyalwaysreads]

'Life Ceremony' by Sayaka Murata

I was really looking forward to reading this - the excitement was real! Some real standouts in this collection but overall, something falls a little short for me and this was a 3/5.

This collection has some real stand-out stories that I absolutely loved and on their own would be 4 or 4.5/5 stars, eg the title story 'Life Ceremony' and 'A First Rate Material'. The way Sayaka Murata writes in these two in particular is both enticingly simple and easy to read, combined with outrageously otherworldly behaviors and norms. I loved them.

Otherwise, most of the other stories in this collection just didn't hit the spot for me. I love her bizarre, everyday-but-weirder style of story-telling and I did actually mostly enjoy reading this, even if each ending often felt like something was lacking. As always for me with Sayaka Murata's stories, something seems to just fall short by the time the stories end and I can't rate the collection higher than 3/5.

[verityreadsbooks]

Wednesday morning train #book - Margo Jefferson’s Negroland. #amreading #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #grantabooks https://www.instagram.com/p/BnVV4rYguPb/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=wjvw7fxt3ii2