Swallows, by Natsuo Kirino, translated from the Japanese by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda (Knopf). This acerbic novel explores the ramifications of a controversial matter in Japan: surrogacy. (Though the follow is authorized there, it’s broadly regarded with skepticism.) Riki, the protagonist, is a twenty-nine-year-old lady from the countryside who’s struggling financially in Tokyo. Determined for stability, she decides to develop into a surrogate for a wealthy, creative couple. However she rapidly begins to resent the spouse’s want to manage Riki’s physique, and he or she is cautious of the husband’s makes an attempt to indicate feminist solidarity. As Riki navigates conception and being pregnant beneath the couple’s gaze, she involves really feel that even their good intentions and a considerable paycheck can’t alleviate a way of exploitation. As she tells the couple, “I simply don’t wish to be handled like a machine.”
Info Age, by Cora Lewis (Joyland Editions). Observations, snippets of dialogue, and wry anecdotes make up this laconic novel, which focusses on the lifetime of a younger lady in New York. The girl works as a reporter for a information web site, the place she covers such topics as “the movie star candidate” and “the ‘uncommon animal’ beat,” and is trailed by doubts in regards to the journalistic enterprise. As she wonders whether or not she is a “hack” or is solely topic to “a profound alienation from the manufacturing and dissemination of data,” the novel turns into a refined meditation on the distinction between what can and can’t be communicated, finally suggesting that intimate moments are probably the most troublesome to seize and convey.
Illustration by Ben Hickey
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