toki

really powerful, haunting ruminations on the effects of child abuse throughout your life. i think labelling this book as "weird girl lit" or anything similarily reductive is doing a huge disservice to the way murata portrays disassociation, trauma, and a society that inherently neglects children & fosters their abusers. heart-wrenching, stomach-turning, nail-biting, but ultimately a very tragic and sorrow tale about abuse.

brilliant; about 30 pages in, you start reading this book differently. it transforms from a collection of (seemingly random) quotes & factoids into themes you have to read between the lines for. markson changes the way you read / think / interpret and the way he does it is incredible

maybe i missed something with this one? i disliked a number of things:

- all the voices blurred together, which might have worked with the theme of unity/disunity, but all the statements were so bland and insipid that i didn't really care to distinguish them. there was a funeral director, certainly, but they were so same-in-tone and same-in-attitude as everyone else that nothing really interested me about their perception of life/death as a funeral director.

- because the voices all blurred together, good chunks of the narration were dedicated to being too obvious to the extent of being unrealistic, e.g characters outright introducing themselves as human or humanoid. the existential philosophy here didn't work for me; it felt like platitudes from ham-fisted raisonneurs rather than a diverse range of beliefs on what it means to be human

- i felt as if the themes were underdeveloped, particularly regarding capitalism. humanoids are essentially created to work, being used as a form of cheap labor, and yet, this book dances around the idea. sure, there are some snide comments here and there, but no real exploration on life as inseparable from capitalism.

overall, i feel like there are better books that do the same thing the employees tries to do, both in style/form & substance.

this was such a fun read! darko dawson is such a sweet and delightful character who has genuine love for his wife and son, to the extent that it propels his character and the plot forwards. honestly, most of my enjoyment came from reading dawson's inner dialogue & his interactions with others

disappointing :/ the commentary on race was done haphazardly and without any real throughline / resolution. i also think the execution of the premise was boring, and i wish more had been done with it