Breasts and Eggs
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Narrated by:
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Emily Woo Zeller
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Jeena Yi
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By:
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Mieko Kawakami
About this listen
The story of three women by a writer hailed by Haruki Murakami as Japan’s most important contemporary novelist.
Challenging every preconception about storytelling and prose style, mixing wry humor and riveting emotional depth, Kawakami is today one of Japan’s most important and best-selling writers. She exploded onto the cultural scene first as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger, and is now an award-winning novelist.
Breasts & Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own.
It tells the story of three women: the 30-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with growing up. Her silence proves a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and frustrations.
On another hot summer’s day 10 years later, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless.
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Diary of a Void
- A Novel
- By: Emi Yagi, David Boyd - translator, Lucy North - translator
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When thirty-four-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that as the only woman at her new workplace—a manufacturer of cardboard tubes—she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day she announces that she can’t clear away her coworkers’ dirty cups—because she’s pregnant and the smell nauseates her. Except Ms. Shibata is not pregnant. But she has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Before long, it becomes all-absorbing, and with every stage of her “pregnancy,” the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve.
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whiny lost woman
- By Pam Haynes on 12-01-23
By: Emi Yagi, and others
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The Nakano Thrift Shop
- A Novel
- By: Hiromi Kawakami, Allison Markin Powell - translator
- Narrated by: Alexandra Bailey
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers that handle them. But like those same customers and staff, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagancies, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart.
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Entire book is a dialogue of he said she said
- By mz on 01-03-19
By: Hiromi Kawakami, and others
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Acts of Service
- A Novel
- By: Lillian Fishman
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Eve has an adoring girlfriend, an impulsive streak, and a secret fear that she’s wasting her brief youth with just one person. So one evening she posts some nudes online. This is how Eve meets Olivia, and through Olivia the charismatic Nathan. Despite her better instincts, the three soon begin a relationship—one that disturbs Eve as much as it enthralls her.
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Just Awesome
- By Stephen D. Sloan on 03-29-23
By: Lillian Fishman
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Kitchen
- By: Banana Yoshimoto
- Narrated by: Emily Zeller
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Mikage is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend, Yoichi, and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father), Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart.
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First Time is the Charm
- By just asking for some common sense on 08-22-19
By: Banana Yoshimoto
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Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
- A Novel
- By: Cho Nam-Joo, Jamie Chang - translator
- Narrated by: Kathleen Choe
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A 30-something-year-old “millennial everywoman”, she has recently left her white-collar desk job - in order to care for her newborn daughter full-time - as so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other women - alive and even dead, both known and unknown to her.
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This is not a novel.
- By Anonymous User on 02-17-21
By: Cho Nam-Joo, and others
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The Memory Police
- A Novel
- By: Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder - translator
- Narrated by: Traci Kato-Kiriyama
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses - until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
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A Calm, Quiet Dystopian
- By Booky Nooky on 12-13-19
By: Yoko Ogawa, and others
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The Ten Loves of Nishino
- By: Hiromi Kawakami, Allison Markin Powell - translator
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Best-selling and beloved Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami (The Nakano Thrift Shop) tells the story of an enigmatic man through the voices of 10 remarkable women who have loved him. Each woman has succumbed, even if only for an hour, to that seductive, imprudent, and furtively feline man who drifted so naturally into their lives. Still clinging to the vivid memory of his warm breath and his indecipherable sentences, 10 women tell their stories as they attempt to recreate the image of the unfathomable Nishino.
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Enjoyable
- By Rose on 08-08-21
By: Hiromi Kawakami, and others
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Cursed Bunny
- Stories
- By: Bora Chung, Anton Hur - translator
- Narrated by: Greta Jung
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From an author never before published in the United States, Cursed Bunny is unique and imaginative, blending horror, sci-fi, fairytales, and speculative fiction into stories that defy categorization. By turns thought-provoking and stomach-turning, here monsters take the shapes of furry woodland creatures and danger lurks in unexpected corners of everyday apartment buildings. But in this unforgettable collection, translated by the acclaimed Anton Hur, Chung’s absurd, haunting universe could be our own, illuminating the ills of contemporary society.
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read by a robot
- By Anonymous User on 01-21-23
By: Bora Chung, and others
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Thirst for Salt
- By: Madelaine Lucas
- Narrated by: Madelaine Lucas
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s hard to remember now that I was once that girl, lying in the sand in my red swimsuit and swimming late into the day. Sharkbait, he called me. It’s in the water where she first sees him: a local man almost twenty years her senior. Adrift in the summer after finishing college, a young woman is on holiday with her mother in an isolated Australian coastal town. Finding herself pulled to Jude, the man in the water, she begins losing herself in the simple, seductive rhythms of his everyday life.
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Beautifully written novel ruined by weak story
- By K. Schuster on 05-30-23
By: Madelaine Lucas
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Sweet Bean Paste
- By: Durian Sukegawa, Alison Watts - translator
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of becoming a writer is just a distant memory. With only the blossoming of the cherry trees to mark the passing of time, he spends his days in a tiny confectionery shop selling dorayaki, a type of pancake filled with sweet bean paste. Into his life comes Tokue, an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past. Tokue makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. She begins to teach him her craft, but as their friendship flourishes, social pressures become impossible to escape.
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Judging Others Makes Us Blind - Dietrich Bonhoeffe
- By Billye Kay on 09-06-24
By: Durian Sukegawa, and others
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Where the Wild Ladies Are
- By: Aoko Matsuda
- Narrated by: Sarah Skaer
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath. Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these and many other spirited women - who also happen to be ghosts. This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, and other excessive “feminine” passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated; and, chances are, a man named Mr. Tei will notice your talents and recruit you, dead or alive (preferably dead), to join his mysterious company.
By: Aoko Matsuda
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If I Had Your Face
- A Novel
- By: Frances Cha
- Narrated by: Frances Cha, Sue Jean Kim, Ruthie Ann Miles, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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If I Had Your Face is a riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, South Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania. Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.
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incredibly enlightening
- By Barbara S on 01-01-21
By: Frances Cha
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Things I Don't Want to Know
- On Writing
- By: Deborah Levy
- Narrated by: Henrietta Meire
- Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory into a luminescent treatise on writing, love, and loss, Things I Don't Want to Know is Deborah Levy's witty response to George Orwell's influential essay "Why I Write." Orwell identified four reasons he was driven to hammer at his typewriter - political purpose, historical impulse, sheer egoism, and aesthetic enthusiasm - and Levy's work riffs on these same commitments from a female writer's perspective.
By: Deborah Levy
What listeners say about Breasts and Eggs
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- kristina
- 01-25-23
Good Story
This was a good story it gets a little drawn out in part 2 but it was good overall.
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- Alison
- 05-20-23
Compelling and important window
A new view into working class women in Japan, beautifully told An important discussion of the meaning of childbearing.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-29-23
Honest, thought provoking, deeply engaging
I found parts of myself in these characters I didn’t have a name for. At times i wanted to scream at these characters, other times I wanted to buy them a beer. Absolutely worth the listen.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Johnathan Swift
- 03-25-23
Remarkable range
Ranges from dark depths to glowing light. Literary but without pretension, she captures both mundane life and poetry in solid everyday language. Moving and emotional yet unsentimental, it’s the most startlingly feminine book I (a man) have ever read. And excellent performance.
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- Rachel
- 07-12-20
Great story — very fresh; no rose colored glasses
I loved how the book started with the theme of windows not being a thing you think about when you’re poor. (Yes I listened to the whole book!) Overall wonderful and the narrator was great but I struggled with everything sounding like it was foreshadowing doom., like in a noir film, almost to the point of absurdity. There is a lot of harsh reality in this story. To the point where I had to take breaks. But there is hope, too. And bravo for non-traditional lifestyles!! There is no single formula for happiness and positivity contributing to the world!
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4 people found this helpful
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- B Ball
- 08-10-21
Feminine perspective of Japanese femininity
Fabulously detailed story telling, from many different intimate perspectives. More dialogue between characters than I can usually stand, though interesting enough to hold my attention.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Gimmh
- 09-14-22
Felt like a series of essays
This felt less like a full story and more a series of essays in the form of conversations. Writing was wonderful and I’ll read more from this author but this story didn’t feel fully cooked yet.
Thanks
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- scottmartinmusic
- 12-26-20
New points of view
I haven’t read a contemporary novel in a long time but keep track of reviews from the New York Times and decided to try this after reading several music biographies In prep for writing my own. I wanted to listen to a novelist’s voice and someone who uses words artistically as opposed to just getting the point across. She definitely has her own voice and writes beautifully. She writes about several things and with a point of view I’ve never encountered before which is a really good reason to read this book. That said the book seems a bit deliberate and like the product of somebody who studied writing as an academic subject, Iike a talented grad school student. There’s always a sense of the tremendous amount of hours that went into crafting this and covering the territory in a way meant to be unique and stand out in the crowd. That’s a shame because it’s something you should never think about when reading a great novel. I will be interested to read a few more well reviewed modern novels and see if I have the same observation.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Kaitie Eddington
- 09-21-22
Unbelievable!
I could not stop listening to this book - so captivating and heartfelt. I will recommend it to all of my friends!
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- Annie Bradley
- 12-05-22
Overwhelming Beautiful
Mieko Kawakami’s novel Breasts and Eggs is bursting with emotional depth and wry humor. Her prose style is so refreshing, I could not put this book down. I constantly thought of my favorite author and Mieko’s mentor, Haruki Murakami, as I devoured these pages. I am thrilled to have more of her novels to read!
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