Some premises prove so irresistible that they become crutches, excusing a colorless execution. That’s not the case here, although Yagi’s gambit is seductive enough to prop up a more ordinary book ... Moments imply a novel that is primarily interested in political commentary ... Yagi doesn’t simply explore how 'pregnancy' affects Shibata, socially and psychologically. Her designs are both deeper and weirder; she wants to press on broad assumptions about life, vitality, and spirit, and where these qualities can be found ... Yagi increasingly blurs the lines between fertility and barrenness, the animate and the inanimate. She sometimes accomplishes this via magic realism ... Behind this lovely (and funny!) mysticism stands a sarcastic, and probably correct, wager—that readers might not be able to grok the value of a woman’s soul without a fetus to incarnate it. Diary of a Void advances one of the most passionate cases I’ve ever read for female interiority, for women’s creative pulse and rich inner life. But even that description fails to capture what Yagi is after: those parts of us, precious and possibly hostile, which flower in darkness, disintegrate when described, and can be compared only to alien life-forms.

The speculative conceit reigns in contemporary publishing, where few novels live up to their promise of revelatory social commentary. But a particularly good one can still tempt even the most cynical of readers ... If occasionally heavy-handed...Yagi has a light touch for the endless ironies made possible by her premise. There is humor ... As the lie starts to become surreal, palpable abdominal kicking and an apparently legitimate sonogram briefly make the reader think that maybe our narrator has actually been tricking us, or herself, all along. The novel’s conclusion is thankfully less pat: In the end we’re left with nothing but the void, 'just big enough for one person.'

Another author might have played the idea for slapstick or suspense ... Yet the book never idealizes pregnancy. Yagi finds ways to show us how strange the experience can be ... As the novel goes on, it shifts from social commentary and satire to something stranger ... If you’ve ever wanted to bite back at a nosy boss, a rude co-worker, an unfair assignment, or the endless list of shoulds we face, then maybe you’ll find something to enjoy in her audacity too.

Built into the form of the diary is a perverse kind of intimacy, which sometimes turns the reader not into a confidant but a voyeur. Yagi makes use of this doubled anxiety — of self-disclosure, but also the possibility of being read, and therefore the possibility of being found out as a fraud — to draw attention to how much the pregnant woman is scrutinized in everyday life ... for a book that is ostensibly about reproduction, there is a surprising lack of sex, and mentions of Shibata’s past lovers are kept to a minimum. Yagi’s omissions here further compound the reader’s sense of Shibata’s isolation, while also granting the reader the satisfaction of reading a narrative that deliberately breaks the linkage between sex and reproduction, and therefore the insidious mythos of biological destiny that prescribes coupling up ... Subsumed by Shibata’s unsteady psychological state, Diary of a Void can only offer at best an incomplete critique of the social conditions in which Shibata finds herself — satire gives way to psychologism. By the end of the novel, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the void is the quotidian cruelty of misogyny and social atomization, and not simply Shibata’s disaffected longing for something — anything — different ... Even with injections of the surreal, the book finds itself within a cohort of neo-naturalist international literature that seeks to represent the dead ends of modern living, depicting a play-by-play of the logic of capitalism unfolding within the interior lives of stricken individuals. This, however, does not a critique make. The coy, deflationary narration only ends up sapping the conclusion of its horror and pathos ... Every piece of literature contains within itself a working theory of the capacity for personal evolution, be it in the form of precepts about the immutability of human nature or the requisite historical or social conditions for change. What makes a piece of literature great is its ability to transcend those precepts and arrive at a clearer conception of society’s contours. Diary of a Void ultimately sticks with its premise until the bitter end, hewing so closely to Shibata’s isolation that it lacks insight into broader social life. The book depicts sexual harassment and paternalism in unsparing detail — capturing the general atmospheric pressure of male incompetence — but it is simply not within the remit of Shibata’s perspective to build up any theory for why things happen to her. The only hint Emi Yagi offers of a more ambitious project is in her depiction of the hypnotic paper coring machinery at the factory Shibata visits every now and then for work.

Yagi doesn’t exalt or condemn Shibata for her choices, nor does she suggest that her protagonist should be doing something else or that her limited act of protest makes her a paragon of resistance. She’s just one woman doing what she desires ... Diary of a Void refuses to take Shibata’s lie to its most dramatic conclusion, subverting the expectation that she will either have to reckon with her choices or pay for her deception ... The narrative of Diary of a Void doesn’t really end up filling a void—only preserving it ... The novel’s real achievement is its refusal to moralize or elevate anything popularly thought to give life meaning ... Where other anti-work novels conclude by glorifying personal connection or even a retreat from the workplace altogether, Diary of a Void once more refuses.

A bleak, acerbic, melancholy story ... It comes as a surprise when the novel takes a surreal turn at the end, and the big lie assumes a life of its own. This is a debut you won’t want to miss.

An inspired premise ... It all makes for both an interesting tease of a novel -- Shibata's pregnancy seems to become increasingly real -- as well as commentary on Japanese society and attitudes towards work, women, and motherhood ... There's a neat mix of illusion and reality here, and Yagi draws Shibata into this ever-more tangible fantasy very nicely ... A sly piece of work.

Riveting and surreal ... Absurdist, amusing and clever, the story brings subtlety and tact to its depiction of workplace discrimination—as well as a touch of magic. Readers will eagerly turn the pages all the way to the bold conclusion.