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Short stories are some of the most fun to write but also read. In short stories, you can sketch absurd scenarios and describe the most odd situations imaginable, without thinking too much about the coherence and logic of the world you create.

I feel that this was the approach taken by Sayaka Murata in her short story collection Life Ceremony. The collection is full of strange stories that really test the reader's endurance for body horror and just pure shock. But there are also other stories, that develop over several pages into something beautifully odd but nostalgic.

Before I continue, this book review will contain some spoilers, so if you do decide to read it and if you want to read the book, please be warned. Again IT WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS.

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The short story collection reads rather quickly. It took me a couple of nights to read through them. Some of them are really good, and will stick with you. Some of the others will fade into obscurity.

The book is really well written, but like most of its kind, it suffers from one big problem: the reader is never taken into the world of the characters, we are never made to feel what they feel, and we always read their stories as if we are outsiders, flies on the wall of life looking in on the characters.

In some stories this really works. There is a particular story about a young lady who begins to eat more more from the street what she can find in the form of wild weeds growing in the cracks. From the outsider perspective, it works. We are told what she is going through and in the end, we can live with her when she eats the weeds and the "wild food".

But other stories are just too far out of the scope of what can be done in the format of "telling" us the story.

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What I mean with this is that we are not made to follow along, we are told certain things to be shocked.

The for example the story about human bones being used in making furniture, or the title story, Life Ceremony, in which the body of a loved one who died is consumed in an elaborate "life ceremony".

We are constantly thrown with statements that will make the stomach turn of the general public. But it is given in a "cold" and "dead" way - it is told. We are not made to feel grossed out. The author did not try to alienate us, rather, the stories were told to shock us. And this never works to shock us.

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In a world filled with shock and horror around every corner, where reality is more shocking than fiction, it does not work to try and tell the reader something gross.

And I think this is the biggest problem, for me, with modern writing. The art of sucking the reader into the pages is lost - not because of some story where the art is lost. But because everything needs to be published in order to drive up sales and to make money for the publisher.

And the reason why this is relevant to this review is simply because like so many other books, there was tremendous potential. Another story that really stuck was a girl that competed with a curtain for the love of a boy. This story was tremendously well written and one of the best. It really sucked the reader in, and in strange ways (all of the best ways) alienated us.

But this success did not carry over to some of the other stories. It felt rushed, as if the publisher told the writer to alienate the reader and shock them - to drive up sales.

And in some ways, this worked, but in others it did not.

I really enjoyed the book, some stories really worked so well. But others did not, especially the title story, Life Ceremony, which really tried too hard to be shocking, weird, and strange.

For now, happy reading and keep well!

All of the musings and writings are my own. The opinions are my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.