Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi

I heard about Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi, translated by Lucy North and David Body on the Books Unbound podcast and I was so amused by the premise of the book that I stopped walking Hannah in the middle of the sidewalk to request it from the library.

First of all, when I borrowed the book, I found a checkout slip from a previous borrower. Here it is:

Look, I really liked this book. I thought it was hilarious and insightful. But I also feel like it's obscure Japanese literature and I'm not sure why a person goes to the library in JULY and the first book they check out this one? Or maybe by session they mean only this one library visit?  I don't know. This slip of paper made me laugh. 

Okay, onward to the book itself. 

Shibata is a lonely young woman who works at a Japanese company that makes cardboard tubes. She has to do her actual work, but is also expected to do all the menial tasks that make the world go around, but no one wants to do. She makes coffee for meetings, cleans up after meetings, answers the phones, and distributes messages around the office. One day she is infuriated at having to make the coffee AGAIN when she announces that she just can't handle the coffee anymore because she is pregnant and the smell nauseates her. 

Only...she's not pregnant. But she documents every week of her pregnancy. This book is a biting satirical look at office culture in modern Japan (I mean, we might argue it's the entire modern world, but Shibata gets an entire YEAR for maternity leave). I enjoyed every second of the book, from wondering if she would ever get found out to wondering why she would bother with pre-natal aerobics classes. I thought it was a fascinating character study of a woman whose unhappiness permeated her entire world leaving me wondering if she actually thought she was pregnant at times. 

I liked this a lot. I thought it was quite funny and I loved the social critique. It was not quite a workplace comedy, but it was telling about modern office culture. It has that sad, haunting feeling that I associate with novels translated from the Japanese that makes you think about a book long after you've finished reading it. It was also just over 200 pages, so I was able to finish it during a time when reading has been quite a challenge.  

If you liked Convenience Store Woman or Ueno Station, give this one a shot. 4.5/5 stars

Hat mentions (why hats?):

They all had elf hats on. (page 79)

...once they'd handed us our jumpsuits, masks, and hard hats, he could hardly contain himself. (page 158)