Life Ceremony

Life Ceremony / Sayaka Murata / Grove Atlantic, July 2022 - $25 (Hardcover)

Sayaka Murata’s prose is deadpan. She is straightforward - no frivolities– she has a knack for dark insight into everyday behavior cut down into a few simple words. Her newest book, Life Ceremony, is another display of this incredible talent. The characters are a mix of old ladies and young women who undergo transformation in the most absurd and unlikely places. By mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, Murata starts to push at the ordinary until it unravels into unusual shapes. The 12 stories within this collection attempt to turn tradition and the norms of society on their head– making us re-evaluate our values by seating us in a frighteningly abnormal world. In the story "A First-Rate Material," we follow two happy couples, Nana and Naoki, but while their marriage and relationship appear normal, the world they exist in is not. Their marriage is threatened by Naoki's disgust with the conventional use of deceased people's bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture. The disgust infringes on their marriage, causing a disagreement that threatens to derail their perfect wedding.

Taking us outside of our norms, Murata does the work that science fiction strives to do by affecting an investigation into the notions of social norms and taboos. Across these twelve stories, Murata continuously challenges our coached, potentially pavilion ideas, movements, and ways of thought. 'Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist,' she writes, 'they were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming.' Hold your tongue. Close your ears. And really think about whose sensibilities you are serving– the answer might be as disturbing as the societies in "Life Ceremony." 

-- Judy Xie