Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
C.i are those of us who would like to experience another life, convinced that it will be better than the present. And then there is Miss Shibata, who in the office can no longer bear having to serve coffee to male colleagues and tidy up, since it’s not her job. But Shibata is the only woman in a men’s office.
So one morning, faced with yet another request from the boss to collect the dirty cups from the meeting room, she announces that she can’t because the smell of coffee bothers her. She is pregnant, or at least this she tells her colleagues about her.
Thus began Shibata’s fake pregnancy: a detailed diary in which, week after week, she tells herself and others the stages of a journey towards a new life. Perhaps someone will have already recognized in this story the plot of the debut novel that was worth a Emi YagiJapanese, born in 1988, the victory of the prestigious Osamu Dazai prize.
The original title of the book, which Mondadori translated into Miss Shibata’s brilliant diaryis Diary of a void. An evocative title because the womb of the young protagonist is actually empty.
And because it is from an inner emptiness that his bet, aimed at demonstrate that there are privileged roles in society, and that of the mother (the story is set in Japan) is one of them.
“The brilliant diary of Miss Shibata” by Emi Yagi (Mondadori).
Needless to say, the nine months of pregnancy will provide her with further evidence in support of her thesis: the possibility of leaving the office in time without staying at night, the thousand attentions reserved for her false nausea, the sense of power conferred in itself by the made to procreate.
But the plot twist is around the corner: the world of mothers, seen from the angle of Shibata, soon reveals itself to be a universe of loneliness in which the responsibilities fall mainly on the mother..
And here it is not necessary to live in Japan to understand that the reality that will come to light is that of a large part of the Westernized world: maximum respect for motherhood as long as you accept the disadvantages, which still persist in the world of work. Thus the void becomes that of a society that does not yet know how to reconcile life and commitment. And dreams.
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