ARC Review: Vanishing World – Sayaka Murata

Few days ago, I was thinking I should go back to requesting books on NetGalley. It’s not like I didn’t like the platform, but that having so many requests denied in a row really affected my enthusiasm for that website.

To my surprise, when I get there the first thing I see is Sayaka Murata’s new book! Which I had no idea was coming out. My experience with Murata is a bit complicated: I didn’t rate Convenince Store Woman very high and I was left speechless with whatever Earthlings was, but there is a certain “I can’t look away” quality to her books, so I was very eager to try her new book.

I hit the request button and hoped for the best. Not too long after, I got the e-mail: My request was approved! Woohooo we are so back baybee! After that I got three more requests approved so I feel like even if I get requests denied I have some backlog to compensate for my bad luck, hah.

So, let’s get to reviewing, shall we?

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata
Published: April 24, 2025 by Grove Press
Genres: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction
Pages: 240
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Libro.fm (Audiobook)
Goodreads

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable.

As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?

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My Thoughts

If you read both of her novels, I can tell you to expect more Earthlings than Convenience Store Woman. If you read only the latter, oh boy do I have news for you.

Murata’s mind is one of a kind. She is able to pack here commentary on social isolation, the dangerous rise of technology, parasocial relationships with fictional characters, distorted views on love and family structure and one topic that is present in all of her novels: conforming to society’s view of what is “normal”.

Normality is the creepiest madness there is. This was all insane, yet it was so right.

— Sayaka Murata

We follow Amane and her attempt to not conform to such a soulless society where babies are basically conceived like products in a factory and people are forgetting how to fall in love with real human beings.

Murata’s writing and the translation are both approachable and fluid. I found the book easy to pick up and got quickly gripped by the dystopian Japan she imagined.

I strongly recommend this book to lovers of sci-fi, weird books and people who might be on the fence about Sayaka Murata’s books.

I would like to thank Grove Press and NetGalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This surprise in my inbox inspired me to open this book on the very first day of 2025. I still don’t know very wll how this whole blogging thing works but I’m going to try my best. 🙂