Breasts and Eggs
Europa Editions · first published 2019 · 432 pages
A writer from Osaka hosts her sister and silent niece for a hot summer visit, and years later faces her own question about having a child.
The voice is frank, funny, and close to the body, and long conversations in small rooms carry much of the weight.
For a night of summer heat, windows open.
About this book
Natsuko is a struggling writer in Tokyo when her older sister, Makiko, arrives from Osaka with her daughter, Midoriko, who has stopped speaking and writes only in a notebook. Makiko is set on breast-enhancement surgery. In the second part, a decade later, Natsuko, now living alone in her late thirties, wonders whether to become a mother on her own. The book stays with money, bodies, family, and the question of who gets to choose.