Swallows by Matsuo Kirino

My first time reading Natsuo Kirino! I managed to pick up this advanced copy from work and looked exactly up my alley from the blurb. However, I waited to start it as I thought it best to read when in Japan to try and fully feel the society that the characters were inhabiting.

The story follows Riki, a late-twenties part-time worker struggling to make ends-meet in modern day Tokyo. Without money to buy convenience store food or afford travel home to Hokkaido to see her family, she is isolated and at a dead end. So when the opportunity presents itself to become a rich couples surrogate for a sizeable sum, Riki reluctantly enters into an arrangement.

The ethical and moral conflicts of surrogacy on the mother and using the maternal body as a vessel/source of income were initially intriguing concepts, and Kirino interestingly compares this economic system to prostitution. However, I felt like as the plot progressed the structure lost its integrity. The ending was predictable and, to me, it felt like a bit of a cop-out.

I also struggled to enjoy/relate to/sympathise with any of the characters in this one. I kept getting annoyed at the decisions they would make and felt it quite unbelievable in the situation. Whilst I got the intentions of the novel, I didn’t like the execution of it.