Definitely a WTF did I just read moment—but not in a good way.

This was such an unpleasant, sterile yet overly sexual reading experience I couldn’t enjoy it for a second. We follow Amane through three periods of her life—sexual awakening, marriage/coming of age, and motherhood—but in an alternate future where copulation has almost been totally replaced with artificial insemination, the dissolution of the family structure and a stark purity culture (but not religious).

The problems for me begin with a narrative that relies on boring repetitive dialogue, barely existent plot and over reliance on bizarre sexual descriptions/experiences; and continues on to achieve seemingly very little but making me feel like I need a shower.

I really like the premise here—but the execution was not for me, the writing (or translation?) was so bare bones, so off-putting, it rode the line between surreal body horror without quit tipping into a place that unnerved me in a way I like, instead it created an atmosphere that was super boring and kinda queasy but not quite eerie or weird enough to be enjoyable (for me) the focus was on reiterating the same info over and over and beating the same scenario to death—ie Amane’s desire to bone all her boyfriends like a total freak, ew no one does that anymore.

I thought ideas surrounding relying on fictional characters to fulfil your romantic and sexual appetites were interesting and worth interrogating, the ideas of humanity evolving to a place without family and what that would look like compelling, but I just don’t think this book did enough. It felt very surface level, and just losing track of the point it was trying to make? Somehow? I dunno. And then the ending? Truly wtf 😳 I can’t say this makes me want to ever pick up another book of hers. 😒

My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for the review copy.

I would've liked this book whether I liked it or not! Sayaka Murata is an alien and I'm so happy she landed here to write her funky little books. The writing is both wise and childish (in a good way) and can really hit the heart of some people. Her characters are always so grown up and immature, and that remained true here. I just had a lot of fun!

Weird, yes. But not weird enough? Weird in the wrong way? I don’t know. I enjoyed it, didn’t love it. A lot of the same conversations being had over and over.

& the ending had me… ??????? why.

After loving Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman, I was soooo excited to read this one, but it ended up being such a letdown. I think the concept for this book is wildly fascinating, but the execution of it was not my favorite. This story has no chapters, which made it feel very tedious and slow paced at times. The conversations in this book get so repetitive and it feels like you're reading the same thing over and over again. I thought the last 3rd of this book was the most interesting section, but I couldn't stand the ending of this book, like WHY is that the direction it had to go in? It was very upsetting to read the ending; I just wasn't feeling it. This book is disturbing like Earthlings, but it didn't hold my attention in the same way at all.

This was so weird and wonderful! Definitely very on theme with her other books. It was such a unique concept too.

This story follows a woman trying to rationalise her desire for sex and family in a world where both are becoming rapidly obsolete. When insemination replaces copulation, marriage becomes an arrangement of strictly platonic companionship, where parasocial desires for fictional characters are the norm in place of traditional sexual/romantic relationships and where children are raised by entire communities rather than belonging to one couple — Amane is trying to figure out just what this means for her as someone who desires a sexual relationship and a traditional family unit complete with a child to call her own and can’t quite figure out why.

I was hooked from the beginning, I absolutely loved her other works ‘life ceremony’ and ‘earthlings’ and was expecting the usual mix of distant madness, engaging writing and social commentary — and I did get that but I’m not sure how much I liked or agreed with it.

It’s a very heavy handed satirisation of (presumably) murata’s own views on issues such as declining birth rates and the ‘breakdown’ of the nuclear family but the way which she dealt with it left me questioning exactly what she wanted the reader to take away from it. In isolation, I think it would be fascinating, but it does feel very ‘we need to preserve the family unit before we become detached and almost inhuman’ to me (I could be completely wrong though MY BAD..)

For example, the main character is repeatedly questioned about her persistent desires to partake in these outdated and even frowned upon traditions, (questions that even had me thinking about where those desires come from or how they might be justified or unjustified) — except the questions lead nowhere, the conversations repeat in different ways and always go the same, very stagnant and boring where much more could’ve been said. It never goes much further than showing us the surface of her unease.

Overall I enjoyed the concept, it was extremely thought provoking to the point where I am excited to mull it over for a WHILE after this (so the review might change too lol) — exactly what the author’s intentions were had me scratching my head a bit but I can’t presume to know that so I’ll judge it based on how it stands by itself.

It’s well written, the world building is fascinating (the body horror was so interesting I’ll be thinking about that too), but the execution feels half baked. I know it’s her style to have relatively short, impactful, weird stories but I do think with a topic so broad there was potential to say MORE! Especially with the ending, which almost felt frantic and lazy as if it was only there for shock value (and echoed her previous books so felt a tad repetitive.)

I would recommend reading this though!! Especially if you enjoyed her other works too :) I’ve not read many things that made me think this much about the concept of family (from marriage to children, from that to society at large, the purpose of sex and romance etc.), even if I may have disagreed with the thesis she posited. I flew through the book and it was a relatively easy read.

Thanks netgalley and the publisher for this arc!!!!

Vanishing World is the exciting new release from Sayaka Murata - author of Earthlings, Convenience Store Woman, and Life Ceremony.

It is a speculative fiction about an alternate version of our world where the vast majority of babies are born via artificial insemination. Married couples no longer have sex, as doing so is considered "incest" since your spouse is part of your "family."

Just like her other books this is a quick, entertaining, and insightful look into what it means to be normal, sexual deviance, platonic relationships, and the classic family structure. I found it to be fast paced and raise some interesting questions regarding the above themes.

The ending shocked me as it was incredibly horrific and disturbing and the rest of the novel didn't really prepare me for it as I didn't see it coming. At first I hated it out of pure disgust, but the more I've sat with it, the more the end makes sense with the discussion I think Murata was trying to have. What happens when what is considered 'normal' is inflexible? Do people rebel in more extreme and dangerous ways than they would if there were less shame in the world?

Overall I didn't connect to this one as emotionally as I did to Earthlings (my personal fave) but it was still a 3.75/4 star read for me!

*Thank you to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Included on BookTrib list of new April releases: https://booktrib.com/2025/04/18/the-chill-quill-april-is-blooming-with-frightfully-fresh-reads/

I am a huge fan of Sayaka Murata but this sadly didn't work for me. As always, I loved her quirky writing and the unique reading experience she always creates. But this felt too repetitive and didn't seem to pick up until the last part. She's still one of my favourite authors but this is her weakest imo.

I've read one other book by this author and quite liked it, so I was excited to give this one a try given the premise (it being considered incest for married couples to have sex to conceive rather than using artificial insemination). I loved this idea, and was quite interested to see where the author would take it. While there were some interesting concepts and I liked several of the aspects relating to how culture, home life, and social norms shifted, these weren't enough to make me enjoy the read.

My biggest issue was with the characters. They felt flat to me, especially the secondary characters. I had the hardest time trying to connect with the protagonist even with how much time we spent immersed in her thoughts. Part of this was how awkward and stilted the dialogue felt to me. It wasn't written in a way that helped the characters feel like real people. There was also a lot of unnecessary repetition, both in the dialogue and the exposition, which made this read feel much longer than it actually is.

I did enjoy the ending, but it was a struggle to get there. Take my review with an unhealthy dose of salt as I tend to struggle with Japanese fiction. If you're looking for a literary fiction with a fascinating concept and tend to enjoy modern Japanese fiction, you may love this one. My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is a hard review for me to write. While Sayaka Murata remains one of my favorite authors (currently on the strength of the magnum opus that is Earthlings alone), I'm afraid that VANISHING WORLD was not it. I made it a little over halfway before I accepted defeat and admitted that it was a miss for e, as it probably will be for others.

This is not because of the premise and the ideas. VANISHING WORLD tells the story of a modern-day Japan that diverged from history during World War II, when, faced with a birthrate issue due to the number of men fighting in the war, researchers developed and normalized a convenient process of artificial insemination, thus redefining what family, love, and sex means. Now that sex and procreation have been successfully separated, increasing numbers of citizens have stopped having sex or even getting married. New social norms have arisen in which dating, sex, and affection can be found outside the "family" if so desired, and it is now common for people to fall in love and have "relationships" with fictional characters.

Once again, Sayaka Murata examines the absurdities of societal notions of sex and relationships, but in the opposite direction from most of her earlier works. Whereas Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman feature main characters who lack a sex drive and eschew societal pressure to have sex and be in traditional family relationships, Amane is unusual in her world in that she DOES have a sex drive, even though her friends and family think she is weird for it. Like all Murata protagonists, she doesn't fit social norms, but her "flipped" views mean a refreshing new angle from which Murata can comment on the arbitrariness of society enacting norms about relationships, families, sex, attraction, and gender onto people... as well as on what HASN'T changed between Amane's world and ours.

Interestingly for me, though Amane's alternate Japan has "fixed" the need for its citizens to have sex for procreation, it hasn't (yet?) addressed other barriers to raising children or forming families. Therefore, Amane and her friends/acquaintances bring up issues such as the continued necessity of having a husband who can work while the mother stays home to take care of the child(ren); of the lack of workplace support for women who want to have children (thus scientists have been working on developing artificial wombs so that men can conceive and carry children, with mixed success). Amane’s Japan is also a place in which same-sex relationships are still not considered acceptable.

The trouble is the story is simply not compellingly told. VANISHING WORLD consists of an endless string of conversations between characters, talking about their society; their views on sex, families, relationships, and raising children; etc. That’s it. There is so much telling rather than showing that I was bored stiff by the book’s slow pace.

Overall, a great idea for a book, but the poor decision to use endless dialogue to world-build and move the “plot” forward meant that I could not enjoy this.

As someone who immensely enjoyed Convenience Store Woman, I was so excited to get the chance to read Vanishing World.

Murata explores so much in such a short novel, breaking apart the family system, love, sex, and identity in just over 200 pages. Our main character Amane was conceived through sexual intercourse during a time when artificial insemination was the more popular method of having a family, and as she begins to grow she reckons with innate feelings and external norms.

Amane and her husband watch the news, at first disgusted with, then slightly more interested by, the implementation of Experiment City and womb transplants. As time goes by, she knows that she is losing her need for love and closeness; what replaces that isn't loneliness, however, but a "cleaner" way of being. The novel was highly readable, and begins to pull you into its bizarre notions of a changed world before you even realise it's happening.

Throughout the novel there is a shifting taking place, with the final form as Mother inching closer. It would be easy to throw away the last few pages as weird, disgusting, and completely unnecessary, but I think Murata is trying to emphasise the complexities of bringing life into the world, and the separation of caregiver and child. The execution of the ending could have been better, but maybe we are meant to sit in our discomfort while Amane realises her final form is Monster, not Mother.


*thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the arc

I absolutely love Sayaka Murata and I wasn’t expecting Vanishing World to turn out the way it did. She is the go-to weird girl read. There is a lot to unravel with Vanishing World and I find the way all the characters are so mesmerizing with their societal beliefs and the lack of sexual activity prior to conceiving children. I also find it really interesting how tunnel-vision people in Experiment City was throughout the last quarter of the book. Overall, I loved this book and I will always read anything Sayaka Murata puts out.

Sayaka Murata, author of "Life-ceremony" and "Earthlings," once again x-rays our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect in "Vanishing World." This novel takes Murata's universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different from our own.

From the outset, Murata establishes a world that feels both familiar and deeply unsettling. The protagonist, Amane, reveals, "I was in sex education class in the fourth year of elementary school when I discovered that I had been conceived by an abnormal method," immediately signaling the extent to which this society has diverged. As the narrative unfolds, we learn that "humans are the only animal who breed through scientific means," a fact that underscores the artificiality of the world Amane inhabits.

Murata's critique of gender and family norms is woven throughout the narrative. Amane's journey is one of seeking to escape "the walled garden my mother had created," a world where "copulation was the norm before the war, but when adult men were sent off to fight, research into artificial insemination rapidly progressed." In this society, "sex was disappearing," and Amane finds the very idea of it – "the very idea of a married couple having sex, it's horrifying."

The novel explores the complexities of relationships and societal expectations. Amane's move with her husband, Saku, to Experiment City (or Paradise-Eden) further illuminates Murata's vision of a society radically transformed. In this city, "every person is considered a Mother to all children," men are beginning to carry children, and traditional family structures have dissolved. As Amane observes, "In this city, everyone was expected to live alone. The concepts of couples and family were considered disruptive." The author asks ""If what we knew as family vanished from the world, surely moments like these would no longer happen?"" Amane's questioning of her own desires is palpable as she wonders, "Why had I ever wanted a family? There were times when I no longer knew the answer to this question".

Murata's writing style is easy and fast-paced, making this exploration of complex themes both accessible and engaging. The narrative effortlessly draws the reader into Amane's world, inviting us to contemplate the nature of love, desire, and societal evolution. As Amane grapples with her own feelings, she reflects, "The outside world is soiled by my feelings of love and my sexual appetite. The only place I feel clean is at home". This journey of transformation is further emphasized when Amane feels that "A new world was being imprinted in me."

One of the most compelling aspects of "Vanishing World" is its ambiguity. Murata presents a society that could be perceived as both a dystopia and a utopia, depending on the reader's own values and beliefs. While some may find the lack of traditional family structures and the control exerted by technology disturbing, others may see in this world a more equitable and rational way of life. As the characters themselves acknowledge, ""But don't you kind of get the feeling that it'll just be a natural development? The family system isn't really appropriate for us anymore?"" and "We've changed and society is also changing to catch up with us. That's all it is". This duality is captured in Amane's observation: "Normality is the creepiest madness there is. This was all insane, Yet it was so right," and is further highlighted by the transformation of gender roles, where "Men and women were now all the same, all wombs in service of the human race."

Ultimately, "Vanishing World" is a thought-provoking and unsettling novel that challenges us to question our most deeply held assumptions about what it means to be human. Murata's vision is both strange and compelling, and this book is sure to stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.

"Is there any such thing as a brain that hasn't been brainwashed? If anything, it's easier to go insane in the way best suited for your world."

A bold and bizarre critique of contemporary Japan that is not as dystopian as it should be. Murata creates a clinical yet vivid world where sex is taboo, intimacy within marriage is incest, and children are everyone's. A disorienting spiral down this Brave-New-World-like that left me feeling a little crazy at the end, but like in a good way. I think.

When I read a Murata book, I expect weird. But I think she is getting weirder with every release that she has. In Vanishing World. Murata has imagined an alternative reality where children are exclusively conceived through artificial insemination, it's the norm that couples do not have sex, and it's even more normal for people to take "lovers" who are fictional characters. We follow Amane, from her childhood when she first discovers her sexual inclinations, into her adult relationships. As the world changes around her, she has to decide if she is going to follow the crowd or forge her own path.

I really appreciated some of the ideas in this book. It was an interesting exploration of relationships and what it means to be a man and a woman in society. I can see Murata playing with the loneliness epidemic in Japan as well, with many of her characters preferring to live by themselves and be entirely self-sufficient. The events of this book seem like an interesting, and logical, consequence of some of those preferences.

The book, on a whole, was not my favorite and I think that was largely due to the world building. Murata has some great ideas but they never felt fully fleshed out. A lot of the book relies on dialogue to explore ideas and her characters have some interesting conversations. But I wanted a little bit more depth to the characters and the world they are in. It felt surface-level. Things take a pretty radical turn at the end of the book and I honestly wish we had spent more time with that part of the book, Except the end. Could have done without that.

Overall, not my favorite of her books.

My Selling Pitch:
While this book is an interesting thought experiment, I think it comes too close to GENUINELY asking whether pedophilia is wrong, and that's too much of a fuckin’ duh for me to give this more than 1 star.

Approach with heavy, heavy caution.

Pre-reading:
I haven't read this author before but I've heard phenomenal things. And let’s face it, I love weird girl shit.

(obviously potential spoilers from here on)
Thick of it:
Red is my favorite color.

What a wacky concept. Love.

Don't tell me I've got bug pussy, lmao.

Uh-why is this lowkey reading like it's romanticizing underage sexual activity? Like there's a weird tone to it because it’s not masturbating is part of coming age; it’s having sex makes you a woman.

Audiobook has BAD dubbed anime voices.

His goal is so wholesome, and I’m lol mpreg.

Inculcate

What’s with the weird incest angle? It reads like childhood sexual abuse, and I'm getting squicked.

This is weird sexual coercion.

I’d say this is why sex Ed is so important, but it’s also more intuitive than this lol.

I feel like it’s Steven Universe and Ben 10, but I'm sure I'm wrong lol.

Nooo, abort abort abort. No teacher student. Ew ew ew!

This book sounds like it’s weirdly trying to justify unhealthy attachment.

A lot of this is stilted, but I suspect a lot of that comes from the translation.

This is such interesting commentary on sexual abuse. Like her mom’s sanctioning it.

It reminds me of I Who Have Never Known Men.

I don't like this audiobook. (I turned it off it was so bad.)

The translation is really bad. It’s like it needed to go through another step or another translator.

Like pickup artist is not the word here.

This is such interesting commentary on fandom and sexuality.

I disagree with that idea so much. She's saying we shouldn't look down on any form of sexual attraction because the morality of it is framed by society, but I feel like consent supersedes that always.

Cloisonne

There are dozens of us!

That's a wild comparison, and I kinda dig it in a self-soothing sense, but I hate that we’re conflating sex with infants again.

The Adam and Eve sections are incoherent to me.

And it’s so weird to me that this book is so fixated on Adam and Eve, but there’s no religion in it. (Other than like assumed Christianity because of Christmas.)

“Love is about having the courage to be called a pervert.” Miss girl, no. No. That's so harmful wtf?

I know this book is trying to justify anime obsession, but there's such a sharp undercurrent of this is also how people justify pedophilia, and homegirl, there's a lot of overlap in those audiences.

Uh, HARD fuckin’ pass on this ideology.

You know, I tried to give this book book grace because it’s translated and commentary on a different culture, but it’s making me really upset.

There is such a conservative religious undercurrent to this.

This book did not just say all women want to have babies.
Oh, I might be done. I’m getting so cranky.

A whole society of virgos? Omg.

I think this would be a very upsetting book to read if you had a miscarriage or had a baby die on you before they could leave the hospital.

I'm just hearing that Jeff Goldblum life finds a way quote.

Oh, WHAT THE FUCK.

Yeah, I don't know what the fuck to do with this. I'm so appalled and uncomfortable.

Post-reading:
While this book is an interesting thought experiment, I think it comes too close to GENUINELY asking whether pedophilia is wrong, and that's too much of a fuckin’ duh for me to give this more than 1 star.

I’m so conflicted. I don’t think the writing is bad despite the fact that it’s very stilted due to the translation. The child-like simplicity of the dialogue kinda works thematically. It’s a book that’s purposefully uncomfortable and detached. It almost feels like someone getting high and musing aloud. There’s no societal filter impressed upon it.

But the subject matter is so EW, and I mean fuckin’ EW, that it makes my skin crawl. And I get that that’s sort of the point, but I don't know what message I'm supposed to take away from it. I don't know if she's actually trying to argue that all morality surrounding sexuality is societally based, so we should be less quick to kink shame. And like call me a prude if you want-you’ll be fucking wrong, but go off-but I’ll kink shame harmful shit all day, any day.

I think if the scope had narrowed a bit to just examine whether infatuation with characters qualified as love or masturbation, we’d be having a different conversation about this book. It’s such an interesting chicken and the egg idea of which comes first: an innate desire for romance or structured, formulaic media designed for consumption. Like with all the AI girlfriend chatbots coming out, it’s so timely. But we abandon this inkling pretty quickly. We just get a taste.

And instead, she drags kids into it. The book literally ends with her essentially raping a child. And I don’t know how you get past that to examine this objectively.

But thematically it’s still so interesting! There’s such a sharp religious undercurrent to this that’s so relevant with all the censorship currently going on in the world. There’s examinations of misogyny, gender identity, sexuality, consent- like she packed so much in! I think this would be such an interesting book to discuss in a book club, but I don’t know where you find people with open enough minds to examine it in little bits and not immediately write it off for some of its content.

I would imagine this would be an incredibly upsetting book for anyone who’s suffered a miscarriage or had a baby die very early on.

It also lowkey kind of romanticizes childhood incestual rape. That’s a wild sentence to type. And I don’t know what to do with that, and still be like I’m glad I read this book because it gave me so much to think about.

It’s not a book I could in good conscious recommend to anyone. It’s not a book I can say I like. I liked the experience of reading it because I like to ponder and examine hard topics. I think you need to push your comfort boundaries to really find your morals, and you need to do it regularly. I think you need to hear and listen to ideas and opinions that are different from your own. And I’m still here just like nervous laughing because what the actual fuck did I just read? I think it’s important that I read this book after I’ve read some other dystopian books that tackle sexuality and gender. I don’t think this is a gateway book into the topic. I think I Who Have Never Known Men, Tender is the Flesh, and Manhunt primed me enough for the genre that I’m able to read upsetting things and distance myself enough from them to still examine the abstract ideas behind the subject matter. I don’t think I could’ve read this book without those.

The thoughts it raises are so intriguing that I won't be putting this on my do not read list, but I don't think there’s enough explicit denouncement of harmful statements and actions that happen within the book for me to decide that this is a moral examination of a complicated subject matter. I think it’s a little too open minded and solipsistic where it prioritizes one person’s needs and desires without appropriately examining the harm caused to others by those desires. The tldr, crass way of saying it is: I don't think it ever gets clear enough on the idea that you can't fuck something just because YOU want to fuck it. The harm caused to you by not being able to fuck something is not equal and opposite to the harm you cause by raping something, you dig? And that’s too much of a sticking point for me. It’s too morally abhorrent for me to get past.

Who should read this:
Fans of social and gender commentary that can handle purposely upsetting subject matter

Ideal reading time:
Anytime

Do I want to reread this:
No.

Would I buy this:
No.

Similar books:
* I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman-dystopian horror, gender and social commentary
* Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica-dystopian horror, gender and social commentary
* Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin-queer, dystopian horror, gender and social commentary
* Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth-dystopian satire horror, gender and social commentary, examination of motherhood
* Januaries by Olivie Blake- hear me out-just the Monster Love story, gender and social commentary, examination of motherhood
* Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder-magical realism, gender and social commentary, examination of motherhood

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

i love sayaka murata's takedowns of modern society and what it means to be "normal," but this one felt a bit one-note for me. i wish there were some stronger characterization or storytelling, as there was in convenience store woman.

'vanishing world' has an incredibly intriguing concept that paints a fascinating dystopian world where the need (and with it the desire) for sex has been eliminated because children are all born through artificial insemination. this idea has endless possibilities and i liked the journey our main character goes on regarding her views on this society.

sadly, the execution was lacking on so many fronts. the worldbuilding is done through a series of dialogues where characters explain things to each other that they both presumably already know, and they're talking in a way like they're reading from a textbook. not to mention that the same information was repeated multiple times in multiple different conversations. this repetitiveness and lack of pacing made the majority of the book feel stagnant, and it didn't motivate me to keep picking it up. it felt like the story didn't get going until two-thirds of the way through, and when it finally got actually interesting, it was cut off with an incredibly disturbing ending that just didn't feel necessary to put in without further exploration of its morality.

this concept could have worked in murata's short story collection 'life ceremony', but in its current form it just doesn't have enough of a storyline for a full novel.

What does it mean to be family? How does your reality change when norms shift? What is normal anyway...a collective delusion we've all committed to upholding? How far will you go to be part of that norm? Murata is an automatic read for me--I like that weird stuff. This might be my least favorite of hers, but that's probably down to how I feel about having kids. More like 3.5.