I have to say that I was kinda annoyed while reading this book. It seems like a very calculated approach to making an international best seller. It’s got an elevator pitch plot (“woman lies about being pregnant so that she can get out of doing menial tasks at work”) coupled with a provocative title and a cover designed to appeal to people grown up reading Japanese comics.
But on the other hand — that title isn’t nearly as attention grabbing in Japanese, and the original cover is:
So — most of that isn’t Emi Yagi’s fault.
If you’re like me, when you read that elevator pitch plot, you naturally immediately thought “and the twist is that” and let me stop you there — but you’d be right. Which is another thing I was annoyed by while reading this book.
But… it’s pretty good? There are some riveting scenes in here. It’s well written (but the translators make some odd choices, like not translating oshibori (warm towels) out of the blue), and it’s amusing. But it’s not like… It’s OK.
I was wondering what the people on Goodreads would say about it, because I could easily see how people would feel pretty unsatisfied by it (people have a tendency to go on and on about identifying with protagonists and junk like that), and neither otaku nor people who hate the Orientalism inherent in otaku-ism will quite find what they’re looking for here.
And indeed — this has an exceptionally low number of people giving the book five stars. (It’s usually in the 20-30% region for a book rated at 3.5.) But also very few people who loathed it. Skimming the 4K (!) reviews, it seems like many people were slightly nonplussed by the book, but somehow feel obligated to kinda like it?
Diary of a Void (2020) by Emi Yagi (buy used, 3.5 on Goodreads)