Staff Pick
Yagi does a fantastic job creating an absurd situation that feels all too plausible, letting the reader in the on the secret while simultaneously leaving them in the dark. As we follow Shibata on her journey, we're with her for every hormone shift, weight fluctuation, mommy aerobics class, and doctor's visit... all of which blur our perception of Shibata's reality. Diary of a Void is a wonderfully biting commentary on the lengths women have to go to justify caring for themselves, not just caring for others. Recommended By Charlotte S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
"Diary of a Void advances one of the most passionate cases I've ever read for female interiority, for women's creative pulse and rich inner life." ― Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
"Always expect the unexpected when you're not expecting." ― Sloane Crosley
A woman in Tokyo avoids harassment at work by perpetuating, for nine months and beyond, the lie that she's pregnant in this prizewinning, thrillingly subversive debut novel about the mother of all deceptions, for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Breasts and Eggs
When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that as the only woman at her new workplace--a manufacturer of cardboard tubes--she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day she announces that she can't clear away her coworkers' dirty cups--because she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is . . . Ms. Shibata is not pregnant.
Pregnant Ms. Shibata doesn't have to serve coffee to anyone. Pregnant Ms. Shibata isn't forced to work overtime. Pregnant Ms. Shibata rests, watches TV, takes long baths, and even joins an aerobics class for expectant mothers. She's finally being treated by her colleagues as more than a hollow core. But she has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Before long, it becomes all-absorbing, and with the help of towel-stuffed shirts and a diary app that tracks every stage of her "pregnancy," the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve.
Surreal and absurdist, and with a winning matter-of-factness, a light touch, and a refreshing sensitivity to mental health, Diary of a Void will keep you turning the pages to see just how far Ms. Shibata will carry her deception for the sake of women, and especially working mothers, everywhere.
Review
"Few novels live up to their promise of revelatory social commentary. But a particularly good one can still tempt even the most cynical of readers....Yagi has a light touch for the endless ironies made possible by her premise." ― Lauren Oyler, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"One of the most intriguing new novels of the summer." ― The Independent
Review
"Satisfyingly acidulous." ― Library Journal
About the Author
Emi Yagi is an editor at a Japanese women's magazine. She was born in 1988 and lives in Tokyo. Diary of a Void is her first novel; it won the Dazai Osamu Prize, awarded annually to the best debut work of fiction.
David Boyd (translator) has twice won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He has translated fiction by Mieko Kawakami, Izumi Suzuki, and Hiroko Oyamada, among others. He is an assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Luc North (translator) is the translator of The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura as well as fiction and nonfiction by over half a dozen other modern and contemporary Japanese writers, including Taeko Kono, Fumiko Enchi, Hiroko Oyamada, and Hiromi Kawakami. Her fiction translations have appeared in Granta, Words Without Borders, and The Southern Review, as well as in The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, and Found in Translation: 100 of the Finest Short Stories Ever Translated.