Men Without Women: Stories Paperback – May 17, 2018

Haruki Murakami once said in an interview that he wanted to be “a writer who tells stories like no other writer.” He succeeds brilliantly in Men Without Women.The first story, “Drive My Car,” might be my favorite. Oddly, it has none of the dreamlike quality of so much of Murakami’s writing. A fairly straightforward narrative, it derives its charm from its quirky characters. I sense Shakespearean overtones and philosophical probings, but maybe that’s just me. Anyway, it’s wonderful.All the characters in these stories are intriguing — a promiscuous and suddenly lovesick plastic surgeon, a nurse who believes she was a lamprey eel in a past life, a quiet man (possibly yakuza)who reads books while drinking in a bar, a man whose three ex-girlfriends committed suicide (he hopes it’s nothing he did)...“Samsa in love” borrows a Kafka character and is, not surprisingly, Kafkaesque. But Murakami rescues Samsa with a delightfully hopeful twist. I loved this story.Despite the title of this book, the collection is rich women and love stories. The last story in the book provides it with its title.Murakami is a fabulous prose stylist. His writing is Japanese in its purity and restraint, but jazz-like in its playful bursts of metaphor. All this combined with an aberrant imagination makes for a reading experience like no other.

I've been a huge Murakami fan for years. I've thoroughly enjoyed his short stories, especially those from "Blind willow, sleeping woman". This is a short to medium length collecting of stories that are decidedly uneven.'Drive my car' begins the collection in a good way. It's simple, easy Murakami, a great way to get into the groove. This eases the reader into 'Yesterday', arguably the second best story of the collection. But of course this story was published in the New Yorker, so I've read it a couple of times. It's still available free online.Next we have a couple of rather ordinary stories (by Murakami standards): 'sheherazade' and 'an independent organ '. Both are written in the Murakami style, but neither really serves to grab the reader's attention.Following these is 'Kino', which is certainly the best story in this collection and arguably rates among the author's best short stories, in my humble opinion. This story alone pushes my rating to four stars instead of three. I pondered this story for days. It really sticks with you.Finishing the collecting are two stories that are good, but really pale after reading 'Kino'. 'Gregor Samsa in love' is a fun twist on the old Kafka story. It's a nice tribute to one of Murakami's biggest influences. And finishing the collection is the title story, little more than a few pages of musings by a vague protagonist.All in all average compared to previous collections by Murakami. I'd say read this if you're a fan, otherwise start out with earlier collections. But as a Murakami fan, it's worth the purchase just for Kino.

I bought this book on a whim after a friend said they liked this author. They named a different book, but the title of this one stood out to me. I'm glad I chanced it with this one instead(After Dark is the book I was recommended to read). I've only finished two of the seven stories(the first and the last), but they both have had a poignant effect as they reveal a little something about the nature of a man's grief over the woman who left his life for whatever reason. Powerful stuff.I just wish I was capable of reading Japanese so I could enjoy the true beauty of Murakami's poetic writing style.

As Murakami's career continues, I find myself looking for his growth, that hope that there is a deeper well (yes, pun intended) the author himself has to plumb as the work continues. And that this progress can be something less than obvious. Murakami's seemed to want to go into Big Book Authorship with 1Q84, which I found to be almost wholly unreadable.So while having a short story collection feels like a refreshing change from the Big Book, it is hard with a good half of them to get away from Murakami once describing some of his stories as failed novels. Murakami is a master of the unresolved ending, but not all of these stories show that mastery and instead leave a little too much in the air. This felt most pointed in the story "Scheherazade," of a shut-in and his relationship with his maybe nurse.Murakami's writing remains as competent as ever, so there was much to enjoy in reading these stories, even though I wasn't always satisfied by their completion. He can handle a 30-pager about as well as anyone writing today. And while the binding element, of men struggling to understand the women in their lives, seems to be a development, relationships and mysterious women have probably always been a near-central (if not central) aspect of Murakami stories.So I find myself torn about this collection. While it didn't feel as repetitive as reading some Murakami can be, there also seems to be a level of challenge lost here. For example, Murakami never risks a story from a woman's perspective in this collection, though he has done just such a thing in the past. But the last two stories show a comic level of experimentation, one an homage to Kafka and the other flirting with a style reminiscent of Padgett Powell. A good read, but more and more I feel the guy is going to have to knock my socks off soon.