The Factory
Ratings36
Average rating3.1
This was not for me. I don't know who this is for.
Half the time I couldn't figure out whose point of view I was reading and most of the time I didn't even know what was going on. This was very, very short and a quarter of it was a report about animals. Animals that may or may not live around the factory? I don't know.
Interesting premise and world but the prose proved to be tedious and unenjoyable overall for me.
“I wasn't ready for work. I wasn't ready for the world. I was hoping for a natural disaster, but it was a beautiful day. I forced myself out of bed and went to work.”
The strange formatting of the dialogue and the nondirectional meandering of the plot made this book difficult to get through, but these idiosyncrasies definitely added to the book's surreal, hazy atmosphere. I really felt the absurdity, confusion, and futility of industrialism that the characters embodied.
I was intrigued by the animal plotline but wish it would've been fleshed out a bit more, although I can appreciate why certain plotpoints were left unexplained. The reveal that Furufue had been working at The Factory for fifteen years was really hard-hitting and almost eerie, especially since it was brought up so casually and the subject was dropped as if this fact was as inconsequential as the rest of the characters' lives.
Wish this one had just a liiiiiittle bit more plot to help push me through and recommend it.
Right up my alley though, deliciously Kafka-esque and dreamlike. Love me some Japanese surrealism.
