I happened upon Diary of a Void at an indie bookstore’s Translated Fiction aisle and immediately knew I had to have it just based on the cover. The synopsis only made me want it more.
I went in with high expectations, but did the rest of the book match the hype I had already mentally created for it?
Read on to find out.
About Diary of a Void
Diary of a Void is about Ms. Shibata, a thirty-something who’s sick and tired of men in her workplace expecting only her — as their sole female colleague — to do the menial chores. As the official synopsis promises, one day she decides to pull off the ‘mother of all deceptions’ — she tells her co-workers she’s pregnant. Except she’s not actually pregnant.
How she carries on with this ruse and what she learns about life, womanhood, and loneliness form the rest of the story.
Review
Don’t be fooled by the quirky premise of Diary of a Void. Going into it, I expected a clever, satirical workplace caper, a short and hilarious read about a successfully pulled-off deception. What I got instead was a much more subversive and thought-provoking look into what it means to be a woman, a mother, and have work-life balance.
Chaptered as the week Shibata is on her ‘pregnancy’ journey, this book starts off at Week 5 when an angry Shibata refuses to clear away her colleagues’ used coffee cups.
A shadow appeared over the spreadsheet on my screen.
“Hey… Cups?”
He’s talking to the cups now. So weird.
She realises just how easy life can be as a pregnant woman — she gets to leave work at 5pm instead of pulling off late nights, buy fresher produce at the supermarket, watch movies she’s not caught in years, and generally have better work-life balance.
But this novel isn’t an advertisement for motherhood and neither does it gloss over the problems with maternity in a patriarchal society. No, in fact, what starts off as an amusing deception balloons into a meditative exploration of how alienating pregnancy can be.
As the weeks progress, Shibata too starts believing in the pregnancy with gusto, going as far as to sign up for a prenatal aerobics class. At one point, I was wondering if I was the one being tricked and if she really was pregnant.
As this review of the book points out, Shibata’s transformation is mirrored in her work too. She is initially apathetic towards her job — her company manufactures cardboard cores for paper tubes — and it foreshadows her initial emptiness.
“What was it all for? The machine had already come to a stop by the time I asked myself that question. The sound of the motor took a moment to fade, then all that was left was a batch of white cardboard tubes and some still-warm machinery. Nothing I couldn’t have seen on video.”
As her ‘pregnancy’ progresses and her connection with the other women at her aerobics class grows, so does her appreciation of her factory for creating something new.
“But it was kind of like a spell. The ribbon never stopped rolling. It just kept moving, and once it was in motion, nothing was going to stop it… There was nothing here dazzling enough to describe as magic. No cutting-edge technology. The spell was in the obsession, the relentless intensity. Words summoning more words, making space for a new story to come into the world. Solemnly, modestly, reverently. And inside the core, a void. Ready for whatever story was going to fill it.”
Much like the void in Shibata as well.
The writing too is solid, with vivid imagery — kudos to translators David Boyd and Lucy North! — and I thoroughly enjoyed Shibata’s deadpan narration.
Overall, Diary of a Void is an evocative read that is equal times amusing and sobering about workplace discrimination and I cannot recommend it enough.
Let’s chat
I will never not love Japanese literary fiction. Have you read this book? Do you have any similar recommendations for me?
Talk to me in the comments!
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