The Factory [Paperback]

The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamadaone of the mostpowerfully strange young voices in Japan [D]ecidedly experimental and subliminally philosophical, it best fits someplace between anti-capitalist science fiction and magic realism. In a wry, deadpan style, she distills the profound unease of a world where companies grow more and more imperceptibly controlling even as they promise workers less. Through these characters, Oyamada has crafted a titanic ecosystem of modern work life, complete with the obligatory never-ending office dinner with co-workers and the emergence of strange new species conjured up by the meaningless, enervating patterns of the 9-to-5 existence. Oyamada deftly ties together the plights of human and nature, both becoming unrecognizable in an inflexible industrial economy.? A noteworthy young female writer with a distinctive voice. The Factory depicts a strange reality, but really points out how similar Oyamadas surreal world is to our own. This makes it an ideal novel for our moment. The text feels as disorienting as the place it describes. Exchanges of dialogue are rendered in a single chunky paragraph; a chapter might move back and forth between time with no cue that its doing so; the reader might be offered the end of an anecdote then have to read on to find the beginning of it. These are clever tactics, a match of form and subject all the more impressive given this is a first novel. Strangely chilling... The Factory is a tale of inaction rather than revolt, a story about the warm, velvety embrace of production models, in which Oyamadas bunker-like Ur-factory comes on like a last bastion of security, a White Whale that nobodys chasing but ends up swallowing you regardless. Disquieting in its slow creep forward, the book presents copious mysteries: What is the purpose of these individuals jobs? What does the factory even make? What is up with the human-sized nutria supposedly living and dying in great numbers on the factorlóÎ