Recent Reading: Diary of a Void

 

The first line of Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi is

The evening vegetables looked so fresh and juicy, the tips of the greens bursting with life.

One can certainly see this line as a metaphor for life and pregnancy, which is what, at least in part, Yagi's short book is about. 

However, I would describe the novel as a workplace drama about the way that one woman, Ms. Shibata, is treated at her workplace. Spoiler alert, she is one of the few women working in an office that is deeply misogynistic. One day Shibata tells a colleague she is nauseous when dealing with the coffee because of her pregnancy. This announcement of expectant motherhood changes the way the men in her workplace treat her. The only problem is that she is not actually pregnant. 

Yagi's novel, at least for me, has parallells with The Elephant Man and Being There, that is, stories that illustrate what W.I. Thomas called the definition of the situation. If people believe something to be true, then it becomes true in its consequences.