Life Ceremony is the first collection of short stories which has been translated into English from the mind-bending author Sayaka Murata. If you’ve read Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings you will know Murata pushes against every single societal norm within her writing and LC is no different. On a weirdness/discomfort level this one fell between CSW and Earthlings for me. As with any collection of short stories, some can be a hit and some a total miss, but I found the overall majority were enjoyable and really got me thinking. What I really found interesting was that as I was reading it felt like many of these stories gave explanations and/or further expansion on some of the taboo subjects covered in CSW and Earthlings.

She has a great talent in making you feel deeply uncomfortable yet somehow still able to question society's standards, taboos and their consequences. This is particularly apparent in stories such as A First Rate Material, Two’s Family, Life Ceremony and Hatchling which also stand out as my favourites.

An engrossing collection of short stories which will have you scratching your head and gasping ‘WTF??’ more times than you can count.

‘Normal is a type of madness, isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.’

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