Finally, the turntable is spinning again and the stray cat has padded back home.
Finally, the turntable is spinning again and the stray cat has padded back home.
After a three-year wait, Haruki Murakami fans will have a fresh collection of seven short stories to knock back on May 9. The tales in “Men Without Women” (translated, from the Japanese, by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goosen; Knopf; $25.95) , all share a common thread of women, their absence and the men that were left behind.
Expectedly, these are brief sketches compared to a proper dive into Murakami’s novels, such as the multi-volume monster “1Q84” from 2011.
“Men Without Women” has the familiar signposts and well-worn barstools that will reconnect with longtime readers of Murakami: magical realism, Beatles tracks and glasses of whiskey. Yet, except for a few tales, the magic is watered down and it’s reality that is now poured stiff.
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In the opening story “Drive My Car, ” an aging actor hires a personal driver to ferry him to and from performances after a drunken driving accident. The yellow Saab convertible becomes a therapist’s couch-on-wheels as he opens up to the young female driver about his dead wife and her past affairs.
Murakami transports readers into the backseat with these two, where they can feel the gears shift, leather crunch and heavy silences linger as the actor unpacks his suffering.
“Kino” is right out of Murakami’s signature hazy, off-kilter world. A banal divorced salesman turned quiet bartender is pushed to confront himself by a cryptic regular at the end of the bar.
The crescendo in the closing pages of the story is a nod to Poe with a heart beat pounding. As the main character hides in the plain hotel, he can’ t avoid the knocking at the door, the rapping at the window, and must confront the heavy beats of his own memories of his ex-wife.
“Don’ t look away, look right at it, ” someone whispered in his ear. “This is what your heart looks like.”
“Samsa in Love” presents an inverse of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” as the insect wakes as a man. Gregor Samsa finds himself in an empty room, in an empty house with an empty memory during the Prague Spring.
He must learn everything it means to be human – dressing himself and dealing with the arousing feelings of love for a hunchbacked female locksmith who appears at this door.
As a country fights for its freedom in the streets, this hobbling, half-dressed man struggles to clothe and feed himself. They mirror each other, both having stumbled from a foggy imprisonment and now having to figure out what it means to be alive.
“The world was waiting for him to learn.”
This collection is a sober, clear-eyed attempt to observe the evasion and confrontation of suffering and loss, and to hope for something better. It’s a worthwhile stopgap to hold Murakami’s international fanbase over till the next release.
“Men Without Women” by Haruki Murakami, published by Knopf, is available May 9.
