Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata

The novel opens with a short prologue in which Amane, age 20, is in bed with her boyfriend, who comments that they are the opposite of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise after eating the forbidden fruit. Now people are returning to Paradise and as the last couple to have sex they are the opposite of the original Adam and Eve. He thinks of her as the last Eve, which she feels is a curse.

Part 1

Amane grew up immersed in her mother’s world, surrounded by photos of a father she never met, raised on tales of her parents’ romance and how she had been born out of their love for each other. Her mother continually impresses on her the importance of falling in love and having children. However, when she is ten years old she learns in a sex-education class at school that this is now contrary to the norm. Some boys find out that she was conceived in an “incestuous” relationship between her parents and start bullying her. She feels that her mother has placed a curse on her. Amane’s first love is an anime character called Lapis, a 7,000 year-old immortal with the appearance of a 14-year-old boy. She begins to feel sexually aroused when watching DVDs of him, and she carries a picture of him in her pass case, just like all the other girls do of their crushes. One day she has an orgasm, and feels that she has had sex with him. The next day she gets her period, and her mother takes her to hospital to be fitted with a contraceptive device as per the norm. She discovers that a boy in her class, Mizuuchi, is also in love with Lapis, but doesn’t want anyone to know. They become close friends, and he confesses he wants to be a doctor and research artificial wombs to enable men to be able to have children without the need for a family. Amane persuades him to have sex as an offering to Lapis. She never feels sexually aroused with him, but she finds this reassuring as she fears feeling the kind of love that her mother, who physically disgusts her, has continually impressed on her as being important. She wants to discover her own true instincts and sexuality, not what her mother has told her. She subsequently has a string of lovers, both fictional and people. As always with Murata, sex is described in purely physical terms and is not titillating in any way. After college she gets a humdrum office job and, deciding she wants children, she marries a man she meets at a singles matching party. However, that marriage is annulled after he sexually assaults her, and some years later she marries Saku after meeting him at another matching event. They decide that Amane will be artificially inseminated once she turns 35, and start saving to buy a house.