Breasts and Eggs

Breasts and Eggs is a novel segmented in two parts - one follows a woman who wants to get breast implants and the second part follows one who wants to have a baby but is struggling to get pregnant.

Hence - Breasts and Eggs.

The protagonist Natsuko, a struggling writer in Tokyo, serves as a vessel for other people's stories, and slowly builds her own arc.
The novel is clever but as a reader, you don't really feel any connection with Natsuko. She floats through life with a general apathy towards everything but that's not necessarily bad.

I really liked the pacing and structure in the second part of the book. The author really found her footing in this part.
The arguments made for and against artificial alternatives for pregnancy are well-articulated.

That said, the book isn't without its flaws - especially, the first part centered around her sister and niece is very disconnected from the same characters shown a couple years later in the second part.

The niece is really bothered about her career and wants to stay away from dating but after 3 years she's working part-time and dating someone, which is contradictory to what was shown before. It is possible that might have been a nod to the fact that as one grows up, they mellow down, but I would've liked to know the niece's reasoning.
Overall, this is a clever book that really takes a deep dive in the lives of adult women and critiques on the popular question - to have a child or not to have?