Diary of a Void
by Emi Yagi
Translated by David Boyd and Lucy North
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What It’s About
Ms. Shibata is an office worker in Tokyo who is tired of being treated like the default cleaner, errand runner, and coffee-cup washer. One day she tells her boss she can’t do it. She’s pregnant. She isn’t, but the lie works immediately. Her workload changes, her hours change, and everyone suddenly becomes careful around her. Then she has to live inside that lie long enough that it starts to feel weirdly real.
What Stuck With Me
This one is fun and sharp.
What I liked most is the reversal. We are used to stories where a woman’s body becomes a liability at work, or where “pregnant” becomes another reason to control her. Here, Shibata uses the idea of pregnancy like a lever and not in a cute way. It’s more a survival way. And honestly, I got it.
The book also nails something I hate: how quickly “not my job” becomes a woman’s job anyway. The little tasks. The constant smoothing. The invisible labor that somehow belongs to her because she is there.
There’s a quiet loneliness running under the humor too. The lie gives her space, but it also isolates her. People get nicer, but they do not get closer. The workplace doesn’t become humane. It just becomes polite.
Also, the premise is genuinely different. It is quirky and built on a very real kind of exhaustion.
Would I Recommend It
Yes, especially if you like workplace novels with a strange premise that still feels grounded.
Read it if you enjoy dry humor, social pressure, and stories about how women learn to make room for themselves in systems that do not offer it freely.
Skip it if you want a big emotional arc, clean answers, or a plot that ties up neatly. This one is more about the feeling of living through it.
My takeaway
Sometimes the only way to be treated like a person is to become a story other people already know how to respect.
If you liked Diary of a Void, you may also like:
When the Museum Is Closed
Another quiet, offbeat look at isolation and routine. Also playful, more inward, but rooted in the same interest in how women carve out space inside rigid systems.
To the Moon
A reflective take on women, work, and emotional labor. Slower and softer, but attentive to how expectations accumulate over time.
Convenience Store Woman
If the social pressure and refusal to conform is what stuck with you, this is an easy pairing. Sharper, stranger, and uninterested in making anyone comfortable.
