Book Review: Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami

Book Review: Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami 

Read: 14/06 - 01/07/2023

My rating: 4 /5 stars

Book of 2023: 7 

On a sweltering summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing over the loss of her good looks, has travelled to the city in search of the breast-enhancing surgery she thinks will change her life. Accompanying her is Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking. In Natsuko’s rundown apartment the three women slowly confront their individual anxieties as well as their relationship under the weight of Midoriko’s punishing silence. 

Eight years later, we are reunited with Natsuko. She is now a writer and finds herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family’s past as she faces her own uncertain future. 

A radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working-class womanhood, Breasts and Eggs recounts the heartbreaking journeys of three women in a society where the odds are stacked against them. 

This is such a powerful exploration of womanhood, girlhood in the modern world. With Natsuko and Midoriko’s perspectives, we see two sides of the coin. Natsuko questions if she can continue to live her life childless, whilst Midoriko is resentful to her mother for having her then struggling to survive. While Natsuko feels incomplete without a child, Midoriko in turn decides she will never have her own. 

We receive a tableaux of lives lived in Tokyo - childless, as parents, single, or not, through conventional means, or not. Kawakami explores the world of belonging, isolation, creativity, hard work, impulsivity, trauma, and family. 

This book is packed full. 

The first half focuses on the relationship between all three women: Natsuko, Makiko, Midoriko. 

The second is solely from Natsuko’s perspective - as she tries to make her mark as a writer, and perhaps a mother. 

As you might expect from a novel titled Breasts and Eggs, there are few men in this story. However, as you also might expect, the actions of men impact the stories of the women Natsuko meets and interacts with. From Natsuko and Makiko’s childhood experiences with their father, to the men that they come across as they go out to work, to the silent father of Midoriko, to the men Natsuko becomes entangled with romantically.

The most impactful men in terms of the story, is the one Natsuko meets when investigating how she could have a child of her own, without the *physical input* of a man. Those pages left me shoooook (the quotes below from 334-6). That whole next section was a wild ride - I read it on the train… I was cackling out loud and staring wide-eyed at the page…

Lines I underlined:

BOOK ONE

I had the feeling that I was the only one around who didn’t know the rules. (13)

How is it possible I knew about sperm first? (14)

Writing is the best. You can do it anywhere, as long as you have pen and paper. It’s free, too. And you can write whatever you want. How sweet is that? (15)

The whole town was ripe with sweat and haunted by the action of the tides. (16)

It was the same apartment, cramped and gloomy, dirty clothes on the floor, but without him, everything was different. (17)

Does blood coming out of your body make you a woman? A potential mother? What makes that so great anyway? Does anyone really believe that? (44)

Life is hard enough with just one body. Why would anyone ever want to make another one? (44)

It’s like I’m in there, somewhere inside myself, and the body I’m in keeps on changing, more and more and more and more, in ways I don’t even know. (65)

The summer sun was still asleep, and the air had an edge. (107)

Set up to give birth, before I was even born [...] I wish I could rip out all those parts of me, the parts already rushing to give birth. (110)

BOOK TWO

The ice in our glasses had melted. (151)

Everything was shining in the heat. When you breathed, it came in through your nose and when you didn’t it came in through your skin. (154)

It was a bubble rising to the surface, created on the premise it would disappear. (159)

We live in this place, in this world, where we can share our words but not our thoughts. (160)

Can I really be alone like this? Forever? I can’t take it - actually, that’s not true, that’s a lie. I’m fine on my own. (166)

The brutal sunlight seemed determined to expend every drop of summer that was left. (172)

As if the strengths of how they felt for one another had produced a sturdy faith in how the world would operate. (172)

But at some point, I picked up the idea that when you’re in that situation with a man - your man - it’s your job as the woman to go along. (175)

Passion and sex were incompatible for me. They didn’t connect. (175)

When people say they want kids, what is it they actually want? Lots of folks would say they want to have a baby with their partner, but what’s the difference between wanting that and wanting your own baby? It felt like people with kids knew something at the onset I couldn’t understand. It’s like they were all members of a club I could never join. (179)

She put her words together carefully, as if she were making a collage. (183)

Just the idea of a strange man’s sperm inside my body was too much to imagine. (186)

Somebody out there knew whose sperm it was. (186)

Think of all the husbands and wives trying to have kids, and all the couples having sex who could wind up having a baby. Could all of them look each other in the eye and say they really, truly knew each other? (187)

Is this what it means to live and die alone? That you’ll always be in the same place, no matter where you are? (197)

“A duty to literature [...]”

“What good does that do anybody?” (208)

Like a row of white boxes, all lined up, the same shape and all the same weight, the days of November came and went. (209)

Language is always art, but in order to achieve its highest form, the language itself - intonation, grammar, speed, everything - has to mutate over time. And as the form of language changes, so does the content. It mutates. (211)

Makiko spoke with tremendous energy, like she was watching scenes unfold before her eyes. (215)

I felt like I’d been left behind, trapped inside the weathered skeleton of an enormous creature that had shed its flesh and skin. Then I started to feel as though it was me, that my body had become the empty husk. The feeling was more desolate than anything I’d ever felt, like I was watching myself dying, helpless to fight back, at the hands of someone who was making some kind of a big mistake. (217)

We had our words, and all the feelings that we never even thought of putting into words. (217)

The streets were inundated with text. Words were everywhere, no matter where you looked. (218)

The words leapt out, whether you tried reading them or not. (218)

When your lips hurt, what’s actually hurting? (222)

Casual sex means letting strange men put themselves inside you. (235)

He was your typical king of the hill. We couldn’t say anything growing up. I was a kid, and a girl on top of that, so he never saw me as a real person. (248)

I always thought she was putting up with it for us. I assumed she hated my father every bit as much as I did, but tolerated him, because she had to. She never complained, just laughed. I was so sure she was protecting us, sacrificing herself. I was young, but I remember thinking about how badly I wanted to grow up and rescue her from that shithole place and that shithead of a man. I seriously thought I could rescue her, from him and from his world. (249)

Every time I shouted or clapped my hands, I felt the alcohol coursing through my veins. (253)

There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory. But I wasn’t getting anywhere. (258)

You wanted this, you did this. How can you complain about it now? (273)

A mud-black feeling swarmed my heart. (275)

Sleek black waves enveloped me, an upswell of evasive patterns. (277)

I always got nervous. She never once let her guard down. She never acted like a grandmother. (281)

“You’re very kind,” he said quietly.

“No one’s ever said that to me before.” (291)

The cherries blossomed overnight, opening to the blue darkness of the city. They shed petals for days, as if the earth was pulling them down. (302)

As much as I loved to hear from Aizawa, I always felt a little lonelier after we spoke. (303)

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m really a woman,” I said. “I know I have the body of a woman. I have breasts like a woman, I get my period like a woman.” (312)

Everything men do repulses me. (313)

A man can never understand what really matters to a woman. (313)

“I mean the pain,” [...] “How much it hurts to be a woman.” (314)

I decided not to let it bother me. An azure Caribbean sky surrounded me in all directions. My heart was bursting, freeing giant wings of white, and I prepared myself to fly over the mighty deep. (323)

Great writers, men and women like, never have kids. (324)

I walked faster and faster, my thoughts ripped to smithereens before they had the chance to fully form. (328)

Charcoal clouds had been hanging just over the city since the morning, and you could hear thunder rumble like the grumbling of a giant beast. (330)

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…….

“That means my semen is five, maybe six times stronger than your average man.” (334)

“But I was probably about ten when I realized that this was my calling…” (335)

“It thrills me just imagining my sperm making their way into the womb” (335)

“I’ve received a lot of positive feedback when it comes to my penis, by the way.” (336)

Told you !!!!!!!!!

Lights spilled over us, like blood and organs gushing from a wound. (338)

It felt like I was in an empty room alone and witnessing a drop cloth fly away, revealing furniture and paintings and old memories I thought I’d lost forever. (340-341)

I heaved a sigh and filled my lungs, like I was testing them for leaks (342)

There should have been all kinds of noises, but it was oddly silent, as if the bark of all the trees, the dirt, the rocks, and the plentitude of leaves had sucked up all the sound and held their breath. (344)

Why do people see no harm in having children? They do it with smiles on their faces, as if it’s not an act of violence. (349)

They want to try being parents. They want to see how their children will turn out. (350)

Once they’ve had a baby, most parents would do anything to shelter them from any form of pain or suffering. But here it is, the only way to actually keep your child from ever knowing pain. Don’t have them in the first place. (351)

The really horrible part is that this bet isn’t yours to make. You’re betting with another person’s life. Not yours. (351)

People are willing to accept the pain and suffering of others, limitless amounts of it, as long as it helps them keep believing in whatever it is they want to believe. (353)

What if… what if I’d met him years ago, when I was younger. Why couldn’t we have met back then? (363)

“I think I fell for you as soon as I read your words.” (363)

My organs felt bloated in my ribcage, swollen and engorged, pushing on my muscle and fat from the inside: it felt as if any moment they might break skin. (371)

She was a good friend - in fact, one of my only friends. And yet I didn’t know a thing about her. There was nothing left. The evidence was gone. (372)

When Mum and Komi died, I never saw them again. They never visited me. This felt incredibly wrong, like an absurd injustice. For over twenty years, I hadn’t seen or heard from Mum or Komi because they died. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. Because they died! (374)

What’s wrong with that part of me staying the way it’s always been? (376)

Why did caring about someone need to involve using your body? (376)

I realized I’d never asked my mum about her early life, before she was a mother. (390)

Sunlight spilling through the narrow entryway. I watched the light until my vision blurred with tears. (397)

My skin was prickly; it almost felt like it was fizzing. (404)

The sea breeze caressed my skin; and as we walked back toward the station, it felt like we were plowing through the start of the night. (410)

“We’re gonna be okay. We’re in this together. Wherever you choose, I’m with you.” (414)

“I can never accept life. Not if I want to go on living.” (417)

In that moment, all I wanted was to hold her. To wrap myself around her. Not with words, and not with my arms. In another way entirely. In some other, undiscoverable way - I wanted to embrace her. (417)

It’s almost like I’m dressed up as a cartoon version of myself. (425)

“It’s strange though, right?” I laughed. “I’m not afraid of anything anymore.” (426)