Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Book Review: Uneven but great nevertheless
Summary: 5 Stars
This collection of short stories contains some of Murakami's best work. That there are stories from his past that were probably best left interred hardly mars the genius of this collection. A few stories, like "Poor Aunt", are laced with absurdity lacking profundity, like the silliness of a Japanese cartoon character. Yet I have to admire the author's audacity and admit that some of the charm of Murakami comes from the cultural disconnect between Western and Eastern sensibility.
What I don't want to read is Murakami mouthing words that could be more authentically articulated by Western authors. In this book Murakami remains true.
Book Review: Highly readable, moderately obnoxious.
Summary: 3 Stars
Haruki Murakami excels at perceiving the minor details that give any particular location its unique character; his cynical observations and dry sense of humor are often very enjoyable. Many of his stories take very mundane aspects of the modern world and skillfully turn them on their head. And he obviously loves writing about food -- its tactile qualities are perfectly suited to his style.
Unfortunately, Murakami also suffers from a malady that I have encountered from more than one Japanese writer. Oftentimes these same observations serve the purpose of an elliptical or anemic plot. The narrator is smug, condescending, and a little whiney. Along with the essential details come laundry lists of less-than-pertinent observations.
Murakami can pen a beautiful sentence such as "Tracks without trains passing over them have a mysterious silence all their own." Yet, he also writes world-class groaners: "The earth turned on its axis while the moon imperceptibly shifted the force of gravity and turned the tides." Or about an ear: "It was on the small side, but the earlobe was all puffy, like a freshly baked Madeleine."
I call him "Abe light".
Book Review: bits of memories like gems wrapped in velvet
Summary: 5 Stars
Being that Murakami Haruki's latest novel will be released to his English reading audience next week, I decided to get back into a Murakami mood by reading his most recent short story collection: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Years ago I read Murakami's first short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes, and some of the stories, such as T.V. People and The Dancing Dwarf left me quite cold, but others such as Slow Boat to China and Sleep revealed to me that Murakami is just as skilled penning short stories as he is penning novels. In fact, early in his career Murakami was more noted for his short story collections than his novels.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman consists of stories that Murakami wrote during the first twenty-five years as a writer and this book contains two of his oldest stories: New York, Mining Disaster and A "Poor Aunt" Story. His first short fiction was the previously mentioned A Slow Boat to China. The most recent stories, the last five in the book, were penned in 2005, so the reader is able to experience the shifts, the changes, and the evolutions of Murakami's stories through the years.
Being that the last four years of my life or so have been devoted to reading, researching, and writing on Murakami's literature, I might not be the most objective reader of this collection because of my familiarity with Murakami's writing style and themes. Many reviews mention how "strange" or "bewildering" the stories are, but to those of us who have read Murakami for a number of years, they come off as just pure Murakami and stories of green monsters, vampires, and man eating cats are perfectly normal next to those of romance in college.
Another thing that will be of interest to longtime Murakami readers is that included within this volume are the stories which would later evolve in longer works such as Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart. It is interesting to see how these stories would later evolve into these much longer works and how Murakami can work an idea that was originally a twenty-five page story into a six hundred page novel.
Not all of the stories in this volume are perfect gems, but there are no chunks of glass either. Each brings something different to the fore and they can easily grasp the reader's heart. I believe that "Tony Takitani," Murakami's lone short story from 1990, might be the most heartrending work by the author because of its themes of love and loss. Also, I believe that this volume would be a good introduction to new readers of Murakami, because it gives equal doses of odd and normal. However, what exactly is odd and what exactly is normal?
Book Review: A mixed bag
Summary: 3 Stars
"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman," is the latest collection of short stories from Haruki Murakami. Personally I am more of a fan of Murakami's novels then his short-story work - his tendency to drift in and out of realism to surrealism works great within the large canvas of a novel but when placed in the confines of a short-story, sometimes the end result seems half baked and begs for further exploration that surely would've been taken within his novel works. That being said, about half of the stories in this collection are firmly planted in reality while the other half veer toward the abstract. One story of interest is, "Tony Takitani," which was adapted into a motion picture by Jun Ichikawa in 2005.Book Review: Better than "An Elephant Vanishes"
Summary: 5 Stars
Although the stories in this collection are collected from Murakami's entire career, it feels much more coherent than his other major collection, "An Elephant Vanishes." The style of the stories is classic Murakami, those who don't like him or want something different aren't going to find any changes here. However, the format of a short story gives Murakami's writing a more immediate, accessible edge; not that his novels are hard to read. Murakami's use of classic Japanese endings is in full effect, with most of the stories having little or no conclusion. Instead, the reader is left to draw his own conclusions, and the emphasis is placed on the experience of the story rather than the story itself.