Men Without Women: Stories

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.

Some of the stories are better than the others as you would expect in a collection, but all worth reading. Our book club decided to read it and all the members were glad that we did. A lively discussion followed. There are no neat, tidy endings to the stories which forces one to think, reflect, speculate and wonder. Some fiction, even well written fiction, leads a discussion group to simply discuss what happened as pertains to plot and characters. In Murakami's stories, the characters are complicated and you need to find your own reasons for the motivations of the character/s. My favorite story was "Kino" and although book club was a few weeks ago, i am still thinking about it. A small bar off the main streets in Aoyama, Japan, with a willow tree in front. You can feel the calm, cozy atmosphere until an event takes place and the main characters life is threatened and changed. This book made me want to read his novels as well. There are different translators for each of the stories and perhaps that is why i gave it a four star instead of a five star rating. Some of the stories flow better than others but all are interesting. Hopefully you won't be disappointed.

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.

Apart from the last three stories, this book is completely unremarkable. The thing I like about Murakami is that he is (sometimes) able to describe a 'parallel universe' with other laws of space and time, which make many of his stories mysterious and imbue reality with a certain magic. In this book, to my mind, he manages to invoke that other reality twice: in Kino and Samsa in love (the book's best story). Kino is a bit too short. Some of the techniques start to feel like mannerisms after a while, and there is the usual idealisation of women and the semi-naïve 'Boku'. But in Samsa in love Murakami breaks at least part of that mold, with a foul-mouthed female protagonist. It's OK, entertaining enough, but not likely to change the history of literature - i.e. entertainment, not (always) art.

On a scale of awkward to surreal, this compilation of Murakami short stories leans more towards the awkward end. In true Murakami style, you'll be exposed to subtle themes on dichotomy - the dueling contrasts within oneself, the contrasts between a man and a woman, and the contrasts between our personal microcosm and the external macrocosm. I like how Murakami balances these stories by interchanging characters throughout. For instance, he starts the book with a story of a man who befriends his late wife's lover, and ends the book with a story of a man who learns of the death of his ex-lover through her husband. Perhaps all the characters in these stories are all the same, and are stuck in an alternate reality/parallel universe, also known as the Murakami purgatory. Maybe Murakami is holding a mirror to our own reality showing us how sometimes we experience the requited and sometimes the unrequited. Or that none of us have "love antibodies" and that we'll eventually play the part of the weird, secretive and lonely protagonist found in many of his books. Perhaps he's showing us that love makes us blind (one character in the book literally has a "blind eye"); that love can cause so much pain we experience things that possibly never happened (Kino); or that we will never fully know or understand someone no matter how intimate you are with them (another common theme in Murakami's books.) Great easy read, simple storytelling with so much subtext. And that's what makes Murakami THE GREATEST writer of our times. In case you're wondering, yes there's a prostitute, a bar and a cat. It wouldn't be a Murakami book without them.

This book immerses you to the dark and intense depths of human emotion. Funny,tragic and poignant, I highly recommend it.

As a man, without a woman, this title intrigued me. But what lead me to Haruki Murakami was a woman I briefly chatted with from a dating site as we exchanged books of authors we were currently reading. So this is my very first Haruki Murakami book I’ve read and I have to say, it’s fitting, for me. I enjoyed this book, very much. I identified with some aspects of these men (I’m sure most men do) from each story. I would have loved to narrate this book. Thank you Haruki Murakami. You have a new fan. More importantly, thank you to the woman who introduced me to you. Regards, L

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.

something of the mystery of the human mind is revealed in each of these stunning stories here the author is mostly interested in men + how they relate ( or don't ) to women a mirror image to Anita Brookner - who's mostly interested in women + how they relate ( or don't ) to men melancholic tales ( mostly about loss + regret ) with endings that often raise more questions than they answer the influence of Kafka can be felt throughout not least in the story entitled "Samsa In Love" in which a beetle awakens one morning to find its body has metamorphosed into that of a man ! with an appendage that does strange things when a woman comes calling !!

that Morakami dude is something else. His stories are not bound by literary parameter. It breaks rule and peeks at the just art of story telling. This book is all about the situation and just notion of that moment. A character and rest thing are given less consideration. Which i enjoyed alot. It was like I was myself in every story and a part of me was among the stories. Stories with no definite beginning or end for that matter. I would recommend it to those who would like to entertain themself with new kind of writing. not new but different to be precise. I guess cheerz

I had to wait for really long, over a month but the book was good.

Murakami te lleva a través de sus historias a la reflexión. Excelente.

Leggere Haruki Murakami é sempre un piacere per lo stile, i contenuti che si sviluppano involvendo il lettore, la fantasia, i riferimenti a musiche che aiutano a comprendere l'atmosfera di certi particolari e il valore universale delle storie. Credevo che Haruki fosse un pittore di grandi murali e immensi dipinti, questo volume però mi ha convinto che rimane lo stesso grande autore anche quando si dedica alle miniature.