I’m reading along (I’ve read no further than the end of this week’s section)
I’ll catch up soon (I haven’t yet finished last week’s section)
I’m reading ahead (I’ve read beyond the end of this week’s section)
I’ve read this book already but I’m here for discussion
I have no intention of catching up or the club has already finished, but I’m using the forums as reference
0voters
Vocab Sheet
Anybody should feel free to add to the vocab sheet. Read the guidelines on the first sheet- even if a word is not yet included you can use the spreadsheet as a tool to get help.
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading need to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as such.
Discussion Questions
Feel free to use these questions as a framework or a starting point for responses. I also encourage people to post their own discussion questions!
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
I’ve been in a bit of a slump in the last few weeks. Haven’t really done a lot of reading etc but I’m trying to get back into it. Read all of this week’s share in one go today and albeit a somewhat slow start it seems pretty interesting. I have to agree that it has several themes etc from the other books we’ve read so far but it still feels fresh everytime imo. Always reminds me of the interview someone mentioned in a thread where Murata said she’s writing for a cult or something and this definitely fits with the recurring themes situation.
Curious to see where she leads us to with this.
Tho not really a lot of people left reading currently which is a shame, haha. Maybe we should pause for a while after/if we get through this one?
I think three of us are currently a bit behind (@NyappyTiramisu, @softlyraining and me). I hope to have caught up by the end of week 4. I also suspect there isn’t a lot of discussion because not a whole lot has happened yet and we’ve already seen a lot of this book’s themes before, but I have good hopes that there will be an uptick once the Murata shenanigans are ramping up.
But I agree that we should probably have a break after this book. @NicoleIsEnough’s reasoning for skipping this one rang very true for me.
I also noticed I was feeling a bit saturated on these themes, reading the first chapter. Taking a break so we can appropriately enjoy the next book sounds like a good idea.
Sounds like I jumped ship at the right point in time then
And just in case, if you’re looking for weird books from other authors, there’s always Murakami We are starting Kafka on the Shore in late May, and it seems that there might be a group reading 1Q84 in summer…
I’m not fully saturated yet Will see how it is after this book. I still kinda want to read しろいろの街の、その骨の体温の, maybe I’ll do that on my own afterwards but a pause and reading some of the other things I’m piling up for ages now would be a welcomed change though, haha.
I’m intrigued to read Murakami. I’ve read a lot of good things about his books but never read one. I heard they’re really hard, though? How do they compare to Murata?
Another classic theme: inappropriate relationship between teacher and pupil.
I was very confused about the attitudes towards love and sex, but I think I get it now. Falling in love and ‘having sex’ with characters is considered weird for the same reason we would fine it weird. Falling in love with humans is fine (I think?), but once you’re married you are family, so having sex with them would be incest, but other than that sex with humans is generally ok as well. That makes me wonder: if the protagonist had been born out of wedlock instead of within marriage, would she have been ok with her mum’s ‘proclivities’?
The description of the match-making party also felt like very familiar Murata territory, especially the business-like, almost transactional nature of it, reducing marriageability to having the same bedtime and tv-watching preferences
Finished this week. This section was tricker to follow for me, I didn’t understand it as well as you guys. But I followed the broad strokes I believe. Looking forward to the next section. I’m thinking the story will slow a bit now that she is an adult…
Interesting. This last section of Part 1 seemed like a big change in topic and style from last week. We seemed to jump quite rapidly from our narrator’s early sexual explorations to her relationship with a high school teacher, and then a very quick progress through two marriages.
I was puzzled by several things.
First - at the end of the relationship with teacher, Amane talks about a world in which human sexual relationships are progressively vanishing.
世界は急速に変わっていた。私は、その変化が心地よかった。
It sounds as if she is glad about this change? But that seemed to clash with her previous behaviour - seeking physical sexual relationships with peers (and older men), even when she was aware that this was viewed as unusual or even troubling behaviour. Have I misunderstood? Or is her attitude changing?
She becomes friends with the attractive (but ?asexual) Juri, and we learn about the range of ficto-sexual partners that she has accumulated. (At one point she explains that she is able to have a physical relationship with one of them by putting a keyholder in her mouth???
(Juri’s understanding of the nature of these fictional relationships seems to be more prosaic - she sees them as just a form of self-love, and tells Amane to grow-up? (though later she seems to become more tolerant/open minded?).
And then there is the very strange description of the first marriage. It seems at first to be adopting the conventions of the novel’s world - a totally sex-less relationship, with a plan for artificial insemination at a future date. But then, when Amane’s husband starts to make sexual advances, she is overcome by nausea and vomits into his mouth before fleeing and calling the police on him. I was completely baffled by this. Has she by this point totally internalised the society’s revulsion at physical human sexual relationships, to the degree that she now finds them revolting? Or was it just that this (unlike her previous relationships?) was initiated by her partner rather than her. I was left mystified.
At the end of the chapter, she is now on her second marriage, with a guy who also seems to have a deep seated ‘yuck’ reaction to the thought of sex. (I wondered if Murata is suggesting that reactions of physical disgust to transgressive sexual activities are totally arbitrary and social conditioned. It may be that in our society we have such visceral responses to pedophilia/bestiality, but we could internalise a different set of responses??
Will this marriage end any better than the first one? Will Amane conceive naturally or artificially. I’m curious to find out, but predicting where this story is going to go seems impossible…
I was also surprised when I read that. I must confess I didn’t really understand her motives for having sexual relationships either… did she simply try to explore her sexuality? I was not sure whether she actually enjoys having sex, or whether she just wants do do it for other reasons.
I think her attitude change may also partly have been induced by her environment, e.g. Juri, or other people (like the teacher) who commented on her being unusual.
I imagined a picture of that character being on the keyholder, and so she could kinda “penetrate” herself with that character?
Regarding the scene with her first husband, I was quite baffled as well initially. But then I thought that maybe the society allows romance and sex (physical or metaphorical) only outside of the family, only with lovers. So she has no issue having “sex” with one of her characters or lovers, but it’s a taboo to have sex with your spouse. (Which is also similar to modern Japan, see the article I posted in the previous week.)
Or maybe just to the thought of sex with his wife…
Anyways, she seems to feel safe with him, so let’s see how they get on.
Didn’t she mention during her first “experiments” with 水内くん that they both had already been sterilized? So I think natural conception is already ruled out.
Also found this section jumped through a lot of events very quickly.
I was too initially confused, but also came to this conclusion. It’s mentioned it’s essentially considered incest, but not immediately, so was quite a confusing jump.
I wonder how her mother thinks about the divorce (as she presumably is the character most connected to the ‘old’ world customs of sex/relationships?).
In my head, I had assumed she had got some sort of contraceptive device over sterilisation (e.g. possibly only semi-permanent) (although thinking back I don’t know why exactly I thought that). So there’s still some chance maybe.
We are starting Kafka on the Shore in late May, and it seems that there might be a group reading 1Q84 in summer…
Will see how it is after this book. I still kinda want to read しろいろの街の、その骨の体温の, maybe I’ll do that on my own afterwards but a pause and reading some of the other things I’m piling up for ages now would be a welcomed change though, haha.
