- This award-winning first novel by Japanese author Emi Yagi is a stunningly good satirical portrayal of what being pregnant actually involves for a young, lonely woman.
- Shibata has a rather empty life. She works in the corporate world in Tokyo where women are second class. Their job is to get the coffee, clean up after meetings, refill the printer, and work at their desk until 8-9pm at least.
- She realises that if she were pregnant she’d be surely treated with much more respect. So she decides to get pregnant by faking it. All of a sudden her male colleagues start treating her with care and kindness, including her section head who is usually demanding and annoying. He and his wife tried but could not have children. But now that Shibata is pregnant, he becomes a considerate human.
- She's permitted to leave work around 5pm, and she realises how much she enjoys the busy streets and trains, the fresher food in the supermarkets, the opportunity to see movies, visit art centres and music performances, and having more time to eat and cook.
- She also, of course, has to keep up the pretence of being pregnant by stuffing towels under her clothes. Luckily for her she begins to put on weight. She enrols in an aerobics class for pregnant women, attending four days a week. She enjoys their company a lot, especially relishing their tirades against their unsupportive husbands.
- As her pregnancy nears the end Shibata's sense of herself and her worth changes. She's adept at fooling her colleagues but she's also fooling herself. And at times, the reader. We wonder, perhaps she is really pregnant? 'Whoa, it moved', she feels at one point. And the obstetrician she finally visits, at week thirty-six, is convinced he can see the baby in the rather fuzzy ultrasound.
- Yagi's prose is tight and sharp, and she doesn't miss an opportunity to skewer with precision: Everything on the screen was as flat as an old sock run over in the middle of the street; She had a face like an anteater.
- Of course we wonder how it will all end. Week 40 is here, and she can feel that the baby has moved down into position.
- The ending, as it turns out, is superb.
(This review in the New Yorker is excellent)
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