⬅️ Read one book a week by Emi Yagi
- a woman pretends to be pregnant to be able to survive the work (as the only woman in the factory she was given all the menial tasks)
- she fakes being pregnant, eats loads, downloads a mommy app, joins mommy aerobics and pads her belly with scarves
- she continues the pretence even once the “baby” was born - stealing pictures and comments from instagram
- the line between dream and reality, inner monologue and outer is blurry
- Loneliness is not mentioned, it is a feeling one gets while reading the book. It’s an atmosphere.
- In Japan’s recent past, the task of preparing and serving tea frequently fell to female office workers, sometimes called ochakumi (“tea-pourers”).
- it is coffee-cleanup duty that causes Shibata, the office worker at the center of the story, to snap and tell her colleagues that she can’t wash the cups due to her morning sickness.
- Diary of a Void is not a story about men versus women—instead, it is about how a pervasive set of rules, biases, and expectations can trap individuals.