Breasts and Eggs

by Mieko Kawakami

Tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's daughter Midoriko. Unable to come to terms with her changed body after giving birth, Makiko becomes obsessed with the prospect of getting breast enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, her twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko is paralyzed by the fear of her oncoming puberty and finds herself unable to voice the vague, yet overwhelming anxieties associated with growing up. The narrator, who remains unnamed for most of the story, struggles with her own indeterminable identity of being neither a "daughter" nor a "mother." Set over three stiflingly hot days in Tokyo, the book tells of a reunion of sorts between two sisters, and the passage into womanhood of young Midoriko.