By Haruki Murakami
Alfred A. Knopf, 2021. 245 pages. Fiction.
A riveting new collection of short stories from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami. The eight masterful stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator: a lonely man. Some of them (like "With the Beatles," "Cream," and "On a Stone Pillow") are nostalgic looks back at youth. Others are set in adulthood--"Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova," "Carnaval," "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey" and the stunning title story. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Haruki himself is present, as in "The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection." Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. The stories all touch beautifully on love and loss, childhood and death . . . all with a signature Murakami twist.
I originally picked up this book because I wanted to read more short story collections, and Murakami did not disappoint. Murakami is one of the most influential writers in the magical realism space. The stories mainly center around mundane day-to-day with little hints and not-so-little hints of magic – like a talking monkey that works in a bath house and literally steals women’s names. Some stories, could be true stories that Murakami experienced, others are obviously not, and others? Well, it’s impossible to tell.
Overall, I really enjoyed the ambiguity of the stories, but I can see how that would be frustrating to some readers. There are no solid answers in this collection. There are a lot of references to jazz, classical piano music, and baseball, none of which I am particularly interested in so I’m sure some of the meaning flew right over my head. Out of all the stories, “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey” and “With the Beatles” are my particular favorites.
If you like First Person Singular, you might also like:
By Gabriel García Márquez
Vintage Books, 2006. 188 pages. Fiction.
The 12 stories in this shimmering collection poignantly depict South Americans adrift in Europe. Combining terror and nostalgia, surreal comedy and the poetry of the commonplace, Strange Pilgrims is a triumph of narrative sorcery by the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
By Amparo Dávila
New Directions Paperbook Original, 2018. 122 pages. Fiction.
Like those of Kafka, Poe, or Shirley Jackson, Amparo Dávila's stories are terrifying, mesmerizing, and expertly crafted you'll finish each one gasping for air. With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession, who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After reading Dávila's debut collection in English you'll wonder how this secret was kept for so long.
By Jhumpa Lahiri
Houghton Mifflin, c1999. 198 pages. Fiction.
Stories about Indians in India and America. The story, A Temporary Matter, is on mixed marriage, Mrs. Sen's is on the adaptation of an immigrant to the U.S., and in the title story an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors.
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