Why a Woman Would Rather Love a Statue Than a Man

"In that book, another dissatisfied employee, Shibata, discovers that her life at work improves drastically after she spontaneously decides to "get" pregnant. She does this by announcing her forthcoming maternity to her supervisors and to H.R. She is immediately relieved of her unofficial duties as the only woman in the office-making coffee, cleaning up, distributing snacks-and is encouraged to go home on time, instead of staying late, as she usually does."

"Like Rika, Shibata begins to take her own needs seriously, making herself healthy meals, exercising, doing exactly what she wants. "So this is pregnancy," she thinks. "What luxury. What loneliness.""

"As the weeks go by, as her imaginary due date approaches and her lie grows steadily more absurd, we begin to wonder if Shibata is experiencing some kind of hysterical break; the novel slides from straight-faced realism into a kind of earnest speculative fiction, suspended in what the narrative theorist Tzvetan Todorov called "the fantastic," the liminal zone between the uncanny and the marvellous."

Yagi's debut novel "Diary of a Void" follows Shibata, a dissatisfied employee who announces a false pregnancy to escape workplace exploitation. Her supervisors immediately relieve her of unpaid domestic duties—making coffee, cleaning, distributing snacks—and allow her to leave on time. Shibata begins prioritizing her own needs, eating well and exercising. As her imaginary due date approaches, the narrative shifts into magical realism, blurring reality and fantasy. The novel explores how women gain autonomy by rejecting societal roles. Similarly, another character named Rika develops self-possession through unconventional means, including a surreal intimate encounter with a marble statue of Venus. Both narratives employ deadpan absurdism to examine female agency and resistance to gendered expectations.

Read at The New Yorker