Julia's Book Club - Butter
35:36 Share

If you're a parent or share a fridge with someone, Instacart is about to make grocery shopping so much easier. Because with family carts, you can share a cart with your partner and each add the items you want. Since between the two of you, odds are you'll both remember everything you need.

And this way, you'll never have to eat milkless cereal again. So, minimize the stress of the weekly shop with Family Carts. Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees apply for three orders in 14 days. Excludes restaurants.

Now, disturbingly, the author, Asako Yuzuki, said in an interview that she was surprised the English translation of butter had been such a huge success because she had thought the Western world had already achieved gender equality and would therefore see the issues raised in butter as unfamiliar and dystopian. She got a lot right in the book, but she sure got that wrong.

Hello and welcome to this month's Book Club episode. Firstly, a big thank you to those of you who shared your thoughts with us on our first book of the year, Wild Dark Shore, by Australian author Charlotte McConaughey. It was wonderful to hear many of you enjoyed it just as much as I did.

Today I have my dear friend Cathy Lett back with me for the first chat of our season. Now Cathy, we need to align our travel schedules because when you were in Australia, I was in the UK. Now I'm in Australia and you're in the UK. So I haven't seen you for forever, forever, forever. How are you?

Because we tend to boomerang back and forth, don't we? We do, we do. But, oh great, I mean, at least you'll be back in England for the summer, so I'm planning lots of fun and frivolity just so we can take our minds off the big orange blob. Yeah, there is a lot happening in our world, courtesy of President Trump, absolutely. Are you distracting yourself by reading good books?

Yes. I mean, being back in Australia for the summer, surf, boogie boarding, Chardonnay, sister time and lots and lots of good beach reading. So I started a new novel, my number 20th. So I couldn't read as much as I wanted to because I had to work a bit. But I'm reading a really good book. Fundamentally, it's called Shortlisted for the Women's Prize, written by

It's a very dirty debut by this author called Nusabia Youssef, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, about a woman who works as an ISIS bride de-radicaliser. But it's really funny.

I mean, they talk about black humour. It's right up my boulevard because I like to take serious subjects and spin them in a comedic way. So that's one to definitely slip into your beach bag. Okay, yeah, I've started on the Women's Prize for Literature shortlist, but I've made a more conservative choice at the start. I've gone for the Elizabeth Strout Tell Me Everything, which is, you know. I love her. Yeah, and I think it's the top off to both the,

Ketteridge series and the Lucy Barton series. But the novel I've just finished, which I really liked, it's called The Historian by Elizabeth Kostoff. I think I'm saying that right too. And it's like a historical film.

fact-driven hunt for Dracula. So these very learned historians who were telling you the sort of 500 years of history from the man that the sort of legend of Dracula was based on and all of the sort of skirmishing with the Ottoman Empire, which gave him his reputation. Do you feel you have to wear a polo neck to protect yourself?

Protect your neck from various fangs coming your way. It's like being back in Canberra. No.

Not show anybody those little bite marks which show I'm on my way to being a member of the undead. I've read a non-fiction too, which I would recommend to people. It's called Careless People, A Story of Where I Used to Work. And it's written by a Kiwi, Sarah Wynne Williams, and it's her story of being very senior at Facebook. So it's an expose on Facebook and I would recommend

recommend it as a read. It's an easy page turning nonfiction. I know Facebook has denied a number of the allegations in it. And I think they may be suing her for breaching her non-disclosure agreement. But it does give you a sense of how the company was built and some of the things that it values.

and some of the things it doesn't. And it helps you understand what's going on with politics today as social media has changed our world. Well, I read a good nonfiction too. I read Deborah Frances White's The Guilty Feminist. She's written a book called Six Conversations We're Scared to Have.

where she tackles some very big subjects, contentious subjects. And it is a bit of a mental macchiato on every page. So if you want some stimulation, I would also recommend that. Yes, I read that for her in manuscript and I would recommend it to people too. It's, as you say, not...

But today we're talking about Buckingham.

This is a Japanese book. The author is Asako Yuzuki. It was translated into English by Polly Barton, and it's really a book that's based on a

real life story, but has taken it in a direction to look at the sort of feminist underpinnings of it. So to give you a snapshot, let me assure you, you can go down an online rabbit hole on this if you want to. I have pulled myself back up from the rabbit hole.

But the story is based on a woman who was called the Konkatsu Killer. Konkatsu is an abbreviated Japanese term meaning marriage-seeking. So it was a woman who was on marriage-seeking sites. Her name was Katsuhiko.

Keiichi Kojima, and she was ultimately convicted of poisoning three of her male lovers. There were more dead bodies littered around than the three that went to trial, and she actually got the death sentence. She hasn't been executed yet, but she is on death row. Her appeal failed. And so, as you would imagine, this was a sensation in Japan. ♪

We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With AllTrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on-trail navigation. Download the free app today.

So Yuzuki's book takes that basic story and introduces us to sort of three female protagonists in the story. Someone who stands in for the real life killer. So she's called her killer Monako Kaji.

Then a protagonist in it is a journalist called Rika. Rika is a career girl at the start of the book. She's always described as sort of, she's work focused, she's working long hours, she doesn't really care about what she's eating. If she has any time to eat, she gets something from a convenience store. She's thin, she's desperate to avoid the

what she sees as the trap of becoming a housewife and married and having her life fettered by those obligations. And then her best friend, Rico, who has become a housewife and is trying to become pregnant and is also a very good cook. And so three women,

What's butter about? Well, butter is about butter. Butter plays its own role in this novel. And it's butter in the sense of butter being identified as a luxury product in Japan. In this novel, Japan is in the grips of a butter shortage.

There's a lot of prestige about whether you just buy the supermarket butter or you shell out for the very expensive French butter, but it is viewed as something to strive for and to grab and to cook with as a treat.

And then there's hierarchies of cooking in this book. So the beautifully produced home-cooked food, which, of course, Japanese cuisine means you're producing lots of complicated little things. So that is an art form, an art form that Rico is pursuing. Or whether you go for the convenience meals or even just for the, you know,

60-second noodles and you're just slopping some hot water on something and getting it down. So these characters are all in this interplay. The killer behind bars has refused to speak to any journalists.

Rika, as a journalist, is desperate to be the exclusive teller of her story, but she cannot get her to respond to her entreaties to give an interview until Rico suggests, just write to her and ask for a recipe. And she does do that. And then that unlocks a sort of obsessional relationship between the two of them. So that's the sort of backdrop of the book. How did you find it?

Well, first of all, this book will make you very, very hungry. It's a lot of food. And I love butter. I don't know about you. I only eat bread so I can slather butter on it. I'm a butter maniac. So even from the title, I was won over. And it's an absolutely fascinating book and it's really all about appetites. And I suppose the message of the book is if you have no appetite for food, you have no appetite for life.

But it's a very psychologically complicated book, I thought, because, you know, as soon as we meet Kaji, she pretends she seems to be the epitome of femininity, that she thinks she should look after men and mollycoddle them and cook for them, a bit like a surrendered wife. And one of her opening lines, she says to the journalist, there are two things that I simply cannot tolerate.

Feminists and margarine. And then what we see happening is that the journalist becomes almost seduced by Kaji and by her kind of decadence and her hedonism. And she realizes how tight and constricting her life is. And it was fascinating for me to read about a culture I knew nothing about. I knew that women in Japan seemed anyway to be very much, it's very much a patriarchal society, right?

But I hadn't realised to what a degree because when she starts, when our journalist character starts eating and cooking and putting on weight,

The men in her life are horrified. The fat shaming was extraordinary because you're supposed to be, you know, in Japan and also in the West, women brought up to be decorative and demure. You know, we know that when a woman and man start talking at the same time, the woman always pulls back. We do that as well. But in Japan, I think this is absolutely exacerbated. So the fact that she rebels by discovering her appetites and eating and getting fat and not caring about

is incredibly liberating. Yeah, she is our killer, this anti-feminist. I mean, that statement about I can't abide, you know, feminists and margarine. And yet in her core, you know, her determination to be unbowed by all of the criticism, including of her body shape and her looks, actually

Actually, she's living out some feminist values. There's a real conundrum right at the centre of how she is represented in the book. And, you know, you're absolutely right. The real-life case was full of commentary about how is it that a woman who is black

You know, she's bigger built. How could she manage to attract these men? So that was what the true crime magazines and fan sites and all the rest of it buzzed with. And it's been brought into this book.

And it gets us to think about, you know, the feminist experience of around body shape, but also around women's roles. And it's fascinating when you, I was thinking a lot about this, about how women, how we're forced to stay slim and attractive. You know, once upon a time in the days of, you know, Botticelli and Rubens,

To be a socialite, you needed cellulite. It would seem to be really fashionable to have lots of fat. So why do women in all societies, not just Japan, have this idea that we have to make ourselves almost invisible to

for the male gaze. So I love this book in that it was really subversive in that way and it was really, there was a bit of anarchy to it and it was saying to women, you know, enjoy life, devour it, and it's a big, juicy book. And I had drool running down my skin at times and I've been slathering butter on everything since. But butter becomes the metaphor, doesn't it, for liberation. Yeah.

It does. It does. And I just think on this body shape thing, Kaji's words when, you know, she's reflecting on her own body shape. So she's in jail. She's not able to eat the foods that she wants to. And she says, my arms, my breasts and my bottom are packed to bursting with all my favorite food.

My body is made up entirely from steaks from the New York Grill, sukiyaki from Imahan and the gargantuan jalapeno steak pie from the Imperial Hotel. When I grow fatigued by the food they serve here in prison and I feel like I'm going out of my mind imagining all the delectable things I could be eating, I gently touch and squeeze myself.

It's quite sensuous, but also there's almost a hint of cannibalism in it, isn't there? I suppose that's another metaphor too because she is serving herself up to the media as this dish, as this plump, almost like something plump is going to be put into the oven. And she is grilled by society and grilled by the media. So she almost does become one of these foodstuffs that she absolutely adores.

And the other thing I liked about it that I thought was an interesting twist was that the journalist goes there to understand Kaji and finds a way into her through the food. But actually, it's Kaji who starts to sort of peel the layers off.

She has a dark story about her father and we understand that her father committed suicide and she feels guilty about it because she didn't go around there. It was after a divorce. And so it's actually Kaji who starts, you know, gets the vegetable peeler out and starts taking layers off our journalist.

And she starts changing and she starts realising things about herself and she becomes the vulnerable one in a way. So everybody swaps roles. And even her best friend, I think her name's Reiko, she's given up her career to be a housewife, but it's driving her insane and she's actually...

You know, she's lost her identity and she's desperate to get some mental stimulation. So she actually starts getting involved in the case, whereas our career woman journalist starts surrendering and pulling back from work a bit and wanting to cook and wanting to... You know, she starts cooking for her friends and she starts sort of... She starts mollycoddling people. And she's a fascinating central character because she's an unreliable narrator. You don't really know...

If she's a predator or if she's being preyed upon by society,

You can never quite capture the centre of her character, can you? And I think, sadly, the book falls away apart at the end for me. I don't know if it did for you because I wanted it to be. It's such a thriller. I mean, you're reading, you're turning the pages with drool running down your chin, buttering your slice of toast to keep yourself going, desperate to find out if she really is a killer, if she really did commit these murders. You don't ever get that satisfying end, do you? I don't know what happened afterwards.

If you felt the same way, I thought it just, the narrative just drifted off a little bit. I did think it drifted off. I mean, I thought the author had built such a wonderfully complex character. I mean, the three female protagonists all have their complexity, but Kaji at the centre of it, the killer in jail, you know, she...

she intrigues you the way she intrigues the others in the novel. And yet, you know, she is dreadful as well. I mean, some of the things she says, you know, one example, women's obsession with work and independence and so on is the source of their dissatisfaction. When women surpass men, their chance for romance slips away from them. Men and women are like

need to understand that they can't find happiness without each other. If you scrimp on butter, your food will taste inferior. And if you scrimp on femininity and a wish to serve your partner, then your relationships will grow impoverished. I know, I know. And yet she's the opposite of feminine in so many ways because she's a bully, she's

She's manipulative, you know, the sort of gender stereotypical image of a woman. She's selfish. She's destructive. She's not those feminine things she's talking about. She's manipulated these men into dependency on her and then, you know, ripped their money off, right?

And it's not entirely clear incident by incident because there's more than one man, whether she kind of drove them to suicide or whether it's actually a murder that's being dressed up to look like a suicide. So there's complexity in that.

And possibly, you know, the worst, worst thing she does is she talked her young sister into not complaining about a sexual assault, you know, trying to give the perpetrator of the sexual assault a sort of leave pass on the basis that, you know, that's kind of the way men are.

And so the sister, when she's telling her story, says that Kaji told her that men are weak, sensitive and tender creatures. So you had to forgive them a bit of rudeness and interference that he probably approached me because I led him on in some way. He'd only behaved the way he had because he was lonely. So she, you know, given a...

leave pass to this predator who had preyed on her sister. So there was this wonderful complexity at the heart of it. And yet I did think the last, I would say, 25%, the author found it quite difficult to land it. And so the...

Our journalist's obsession with the killer starts to fall away because she's now structuring her own life in a way that's more fulfilling for her. And yet that landed with me as a little bit twee in parts. Me too. Yeah, so I just don't think it quite got me to where I wanted to go, but I still found it a really page-turning read.

We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With AllTrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on-trail navigation. Download the free app today.

Make it a Vrbo.

And that thing about when she's talking about letting the predator off the hook, the male predator, I mean...

You understand that because Japan is so patriarchal that it's almost like sexual Stockholm syndrome. You know, when the women's a bit like women who vote for Trump, you know, they're they're they're bought into this idea that these big, strong men are superior in some way. And I found that conundrum in her really interesting because she's so domineering.

And yet how could she be espousing these kind of views that men are superior and they deserve, we've got to allow them to make mistakes and revere them at all times. So, yeah, it's full of contradictions, the book, the whole way through. And there's also a hint of staffism. You think that is there a love and deep affection sort of context

stirring between Kaji and the journalist? Did you not feel there was some sort of lesbian frissons? Yeah, I actually didn't read it like that, but I had a conversation last week with a friend who did read it like that. I read it as obsessional between the journalist and the killer and a weird obsessional role modelling.

She was asking this woman who was fixated on food and men and manipulation and getting her own way. She was looking to her to unlock something in herself. But I didn't read that as directly sexual. I read it as her wanting to be unlocked from this very

narrow life, entirely focused on work, a relationship with a man which really wasn't much of a relationship. It was like they were going through the motions because people thought that, you know, by their age you should have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, not that there was any real passion in it. And she was becoming the key to unlocking something broader. Yeah.

I suppose it's the emotional libido because all the men in the book are pretty one-dimensional. Her sex life's pretty flat.

And yet then she discovers this woman who's so intense and interesting and magnetic and starts to get her to reveal her feelings. So I suppose it was more of an emotional libido that was being stirred than a physical one. But as you can see from the way we're talking about it, it's a very layered, complicated, the recipe for the book, it's got so many spices and herbs and different flavors and tangs and tastes and it's Moorish because of that.

And you can read it in so many different ways. You can. Now, disturbingly, the author, Asako Yuzuki, said in an interview that she was surprised the English translation of butter had been such a huge success because she had thought the Western world had already achieved gender equality and would therefore see the issues raised in butter as unfamiliar and dystopian. LAUGHTER

She got a lot right in the book, but she sure got that wrong. She sure got that wrong, yeah.

I mean, I just gave a talk at the Canberra Press Club and I only gave it because, I mean, because it's quite a scary thing to do, as you know, Julia. I only did it because, you know, I think I can't complain about women my age not being seen in the media if I had to stand back. And I talked about the gender pay gap in Australia. I talked about, you know, the second glass ceiling women face at home when we're doing 99% of all the housework and childcare. And then I talked about the pleasure gap.

that heterosexual women have one orgasm for every five orgasms enjoyed by a heterosexual man and how most men think neutral orgasm is an insurance company. And so maybe I'll send her that speech so she can be a little bit more enlightened about the fight that the sisterhood is waging in the West. Yeah.

And maybe in Japan it's easier because the battle lines are drawn and you can see the enemy. Because often in the West, the enemy, it's more in cities. You can't quite see where they are, even though they're eroding our rights on a daily basis. So isn't that a fascinating comment that she made? Yeah, it's certainly a society, and it's part of the Japanese economic problem, where it's

it's very hard for women to maintain their labour force participation once they enter marriage and motherhood. And so the stark choices that are put in this book are,

in much more vivid relief than they would be in many, many other societies, including Australia and the UK and other places where there's now, not saying it's easy because it's not, but there's now ways of putting together work and family life. We still have the problem in the West that society expects women to work as though they don't have children and raise children as though they don't work. Yes, yeah, that's absolutely true. We've doubled up on expectations.

Another thing that really struck me about this book is because it is based on someone's real life. I mean, there is the real life killer, the Konkatsu killer, Kanai Kijima, who is behind bars, but she herself has written about her own experiences. So she's published a memoir and a

novel of her own. And she's expressed very deep discontent with this book. She wrote on her blog, apparently she can still blog even though she's in jail. She wrote, what Yuzuki and the publisher are doing is nothing short of theft.

If they interfere with external communication rights, they are not just thieves but complicit in murder. They continue to use my name without permission. I truly think it is a vulgar book, butter.

Well, that's interesting. Well, I mean, she does have a point. It's her life. But if anything in it was too outrageously untrue, she could have sued. She hasn't sued. So maybe it's just an absolutely accurate portrait of what went on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure that the book –

would put itself out there as telling the stories of her crimes, but it's certainly borrowed from the underpinnings of her character. So the killer in the book and the killer who's behind bars, the real life woman, are from the same part of Japan. They're around the same age.

It's the same set of criticisms, you know, inverted commas, they're ugly and fat. How could they have attracted men to them? You know, how did all of these men get manipulated? The sense that food was used as part of the way in which

The attraction to men was played out. Men were lured into being involved with her. So the underpinnings of the character are there. I don't think the full, you know, sort of narrative of the crimes mirrors the crimes in real life. But it is always an interesting conundrum when someone is writing in real time about...

You know, we're so used to it in historical fiction where, you know,

Hilary Mantel will fictionalise Cromwell for us. Did he ever think what Hilary Mantel writes him is thinking? Well, who knows? But we're sort of settled with that. But when it's so contemporary, it does throw up another set of issues. I mean, it's interesting what you were saying too about how people couldn't cope with the fact that she was fat and unattractive.

So I think the lesson from that is the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. That's not aiming too high. I would also say the same for women. I mean, as you know, I've got a boyfriend now who does all the cooking. Yes, and he's gorgeous. And I was married to two alpha men and now I've got a beta male. The beta male is the one who's really good in the kitchen. And I've learned that when a man says, what do women want in bed? The answer is breakfast.

And a really good book, which we can supply, of course, from our podcast. So, yeah, I think maybe we need to write the male version of this.

It's the men who get obsessed with food and cooking and decide that that's the way to seduce and pamper and keep interesting women like us, Julia. Right. Okay. We need to do the other side. Plenty to think about there and plenty of good literature to indulge in from Japan. So lots being translated and it is such an interesting world and culture. Oh,

I read a book a while back, just a little page turner called Decagon, which was a sort of Japanese take on an Agatha Christie. Very, very readable. Good fun. Good fun. Yeah. Isn't that the best thing about literature is that it takes you into worlds you would never, ever...

have thought of before and seduces you and sort of gives you the taste of the culture and just whets your appetite for more. And only literature can do that, I think, because if you're watching a film, everything's being said for you. But if you're using your own imagination, it's just so much more tantalising. So let's go to Japan. Yeah, let's go to Japan. I think it's time we had a road trip, a road trip podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That would be good fun. Before we go, can you give us any little sneak peeks on what you're writing? Is it set in Japan and involving butter? Is it like HRT where pandemic days and you managed to set a book on a cruise ship, which was kind of hilarious at the time? Is it like a revenge club with women coming together, plotting the downfall of someone who was really owed? What's happening?

Well, I'm still writing about women our age because I think at this age of life our hinterland is so interesting. You know, we've had the heartbreaks and the promotions and the backstabbing and the breakdowns and the kids and the careers and all of that, love affairs.

And yet whenever I talk to publishers about writing about this age group, they say one publisher said to me, oh, middle-aged women, they're just not that sexy. And another one said, yeah, middle-aged women, they're like Mogadishu or Sudan. We know they exist, but nobody wants to go there. Oh, yeah.

And I thought, you know, who is reading books? It's women our age. Yes. So that's why when The Revenge Club came out and it's a story about four middle-aged women who take revenge on the men who ruined their careers and it became a bestseller, number one in Australia, and I thought that was the best revenge ever. So I'm writing more stories about women in our age group because I just think we're so interesting. LAUGHTER

You know, we've got so much to say and we can say it in a witty and wonderful way. So that's what I'm doing now. It's a book about two sisters and their mum and lots of things that...

go wrong. Right. And how far away in our future should we be planning a day or two lolling around reading the new Cathy Lett? It's out, well, just in time for the next summer, for February. So I expect to see it in your beach bag, Julia. Absolutely. It will definitely, definitely be there. Well, Cathy, as always, thank you so much for joining me. We've had lots of fun, which is great.

We hope that we've enticed you to read Butter. It's certainly worth a read. And if you are someone who knows how to cook, I think there's inspiration enough in the pages to probably belt out some very delicious meals.

Please go to our Instagram page. You won't see pictures of any delicious meals there because cooking is not my thing. But on our Instagram page, a podcast of one's own, please go and give us your thoughts on butter. And if you want to take a picture of what you're cooking, please send that in. And we'd also love to hear about any books you've read that you think we should explore further. And we'll look forward to seeing you next time.

Can I just say, I hate cooking too. I use my smoke alarm as a timer. But this book is definitely food for thought. Oh, boom, boom. Boom, boom. On that note, I'm going to go and get some Vegemite on toast with lots and lots of butter. Nothing better. Thank you, Cathy. Thank you.

Thank you.

Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepard, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecott, with editing by Liz Kean from Headline Productions. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us at giwl at anu.edu.au.

To stay up to date with the Institute's work, go to giwl.anu.edu.au and sign up to our updates or follow us on social media at Jewel ANU. You can also find a podcast of one's own on Instagram.

The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.

Live from the internet's red carpet, it's Vrbo's 2025 Vacation Rentals of the Year. Our annual showcase of the very best of Vrbo. Selected from over 2 million private vacation rentals, this year's list features breakout hits like a ski-in, ski-out mountain chalet and a modern beach compound with unobstructed ocean views. And with discounts on select stays of one week or longer, these critically acclaimed homes might be more affordable than you'd think. Head over to Vrbo.com, that's V-R-B-O, to check out the official list and make it a Vrbo.