Review of My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

For a hot minute, I had always heard of Ruth Ozeki’s work, but never sought it. As I watch my favorite YouTubers talk about books, they’ve always managed to show a copy of one of her books. It was not usually My Year of Meats, but when I was wandering down the rows of my library, I spotted a copy of this book in the O last name section.

I actually had not heard of this book until this moment, but when I flipped it over and read the synopsis on the back cover, I knew I had to read it.

I study Korean women’s literature in graduate school, and the concept of the home and it being something that defines and constrains women is something that comes up quite a bit. It was coming up during the synopsis already for this book, and it kind of reminded me of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.

Then I read it over the course of two days—here’s my review of the book!

The story of one Japanese housewife and the show she consumes about American households and beef.

There are two diverging storylines throughout the course of this novel, and they come to a crash course towards the end. First we have Akiko, who lives in Japan with an abusive husband. Her husband helps produce a television series in Japan about American families, and their sponsor is a major beef company. Naturally, each family divulges their life secrets and a recipe involving meat.

Akiko watches the show as she ponders how unhappy her life has become, and tells her husband nothing about it really excites her right now. Documentary filmmaker Jane is enlisted to join the show, and when she gets her hands on directing an episode, Akiko really loves the authenticity in that episode.

Jane likes to rebel against what the sponsors want, as she wants to tell a story. While they want to push their little beef agenda and idea of what a happy American family is, Jane wants to go out and find people who are more authentic, even if it means showing a recipe that’s not beef.

So begins a trek all over the United States. We see the impacts of this in the back and forth part of the novel between countries, as Akiko sees her husband getting angry about Jane’s habits and not wanting to adhere to them anymore.

However, Akiko has been making the recipes for pork and other meats, even though beef is supposed to be king. That angers her husband even more, and she goes on her own journey when she realizes the reason why she cannot get pregnant and why her health has been suffering.

Eventually these two characters are going to meet, but before we get there we get an eclectic cast of characters who help make the documentary come alive, whether it’s the Japanese crew or the families whose stories are getting told on the screen.

There’s also some unfortunate pockets of humor tucked into all of this, making it quite an interesting story to read on the page overall.

Overall Thoughts

I enjoyed this novel! Like I said, it reminded me of a slightly less dark version of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, which I enjoyed a lot as well.

I think if you’re sensitive towards rape and the slaughter of animals, this might not be the book for you if you can’t stomach a graphic scene where one of the main characters is raped, sexually assaulted, or traversing through a bloody meat factory. I thought these were hard myself, but I pushed through.

Otherwise, lots of interesting discussions about environmentalism and ethics are involved with this as well.

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