I realised Haruki Murakami has become my easy and comfort read, when I finished up this book in few hours. In general one would not say his books are in any way close to easy reading category. After reading all his fictions, his books and writing style have become familiar to me, a positive and sweet familiarity that is. This familiarity with his fiction gives me comfort and solace in his books. When I start reading his books, I have a feeling as if I am travelling to a familiar place where I can be comfortable without putting any extra effort.
I love to be in his fictional world so much that I have started rereading his books. Recently I reread Kafka on the Shore.
I was of course elated to know about his new book coming up in 2021. It took little edge off my excitement when I heard it is only a short story collection. I prefer his novels to short stories. Still I eagerly waited for the book.
So finally when the wait was over, I could not control myself and finished the book in one sitting. It is not a huge book, that helped in finishing the book so fast definitely.
This book with 240 pages is a collection of eight short stories. Five of this collection was published elsewhere before. Now the premise of the stories without spoiler –
All the stories are narrated in first person.
I generally don’t rate books. Here I have rated the stories only as compared to the other stories in the book. Five stars for a story only mean, for me the story is the best compared to the other stories in this particular book. Five stars do not imply the best short story I have read in my life in absolute terms.
1.Cream
This story was first published in The New Yorker (January 2019).
The narrator in his flashback thinks about a strange incident that had happened in his youth. The year after his high school maybe someone played a prank with him. He travelled a long way to attend a piano recital in vain. There he met some stranger who spoke about cream or essence of life.
The beginning of the story is fine but personally for me it does not reach at its destination in a natural way. In fact the conclusion of the story did not feel significant and it felt to me as if the writer has dragged the word “cream” into the story and has stretched the implication.
However, I immensely enjoyed reading the description of the journey to a mountain top and the narration of a desolate suburb location.
3 stars
2. On a Stone Pillow
This was first published in Freeman’s (October 2020).
Here the narrator has a chance one night encounter with an older woman, a woman, who has self-published a Tanka poem collection. From her poetries she seems to fixate on love and death. Narrator has quoted some of her poems to show that. She is involved in an one-sided unrequited love. She does not even have any significant presence in writer’s memory. A sad love story but neither my kind of story nor something I would expect from Murakami.
2.5 stars
3. Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova
This first appeared in Granta (August 2019).
This story is purely about music. Musician Charlie Parker dies in 1955 from over dose. In 1960’s the narrator, a college student, writes review of a new albeit non-existent album by Parker named, Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova, for a college magazine. His idea was just in case Parker survived the overdose and went on to cut this album. The narrator yearns that imaginary album to be real so much that some time his eyes see things which may not be there.
The writer has described the album in so much detail that one can imagine how much he admires the music of Parker.
This is a brilliant story with use of some innovative technique but the topic is too specific. Someone like me who has not heard of Parker before or someone just casually listened to him few times can’t appreciate the story.
4.5 stars
4. With the Beatles
This story was first published in The New Yorker (February 2020)
This is another story about music. The narrator writes how as a boomer he first hand experienced Beatles-mania. Again here there is detail description about music of Beatles and their contemporaries.
The narrator experiences something special when he saw a girl walking in the school corridor holding a Beatles record. That emotion becomes his acid test. If he feels similar emotion for a girl then she is special. Then he gets his first girl friend. She does not pass the acid test yet the narrator is happy with their situation. One day he is supposed to meet her but when he reached her place she was not at home.
There is only her brother. The brother has memory lapses some time. The brother does not know where is rest of his family as he overslept that morning. But he talks with the narrator for quite some time and even asks him to read aloud a story. Then he goes to his room while asks the narrator to wait in living room for some more time for his sister.
I would have loved so much if at some point the narrator gets bores and looks around the house and find bodies of his girlfriend, her parents and her sister violently chopped up by the nicely talking brother with memory lapses.
But things generally don’t happen like this in Murakami’s book.
The basic plot is good. But I feel at some point the narrator merges into the writer and then Murakami goes on and on reminiscing about the music, atmosphere, films, and American politics of 1960s. Most part of those felt irrelevant to the plot but I felt nostalgic to see the bygone era in the writer’s eyes.
4.5 stars
5. Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey
This first appeared in The New Yorker (June 2020).
The narrator meets a talking monkey in a small motel of a small town. The monkey not only can talk he is a fully cultured one with fine manners and fine taste in music. But this has become tragedy in his life. He can’t belong to the society of either human or monkeys. He is the odd one everywhere. He craves for companionship and love. He can love only human women. But they obviously would never want him. He is helpless by his bodily hormone, which gives rise to desire and love in him. He can’t help his desires. To fulfill his desires he finds another way to be close to human women.
This is the typical Murakami fare with utter absurdity yet totally relatable. I also enjoyed reading the description of the small town with hot spring and the small motel in it.
5 stars
6. Carnaval
A third story totally devoted to music. Here the narrator, a middle aged man, shares his interest in western classical music with an ugly woman. If it is even possible, writer has beautifully described the ugliness of a woman, who uses ugliness as her power. The narrator bonds with the woman over Schumann’s Carnaval. They attended and listened to various versions of the piece. They discussed deeply about each version.
Hence as you can see this is another story in this collection about music.
The relationship between the narrator and the ugly woman is based purely on love for music. There is no other undercurrent. Is it because the woman is ugly? Maybe. And as a woman I can’t help feeling uncomfortable about this. But then we see the woman’s husband is a gorgeous man. So she is not absolutely “ugly” even though she is “ugly” to the “happily married” narrator.
Here too most of the narration is regarding a particular piece of music. If readers are not into western classical music they can’t appreciate it. The real let down for me in this story is the ending, too banal.
4.5 stars
7. The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection
According to the writer himself this story is autobiographical and he has even mentioned the name Haruki Murakami. So we can safely assume here the real writer is the narrator. The issue with this story, personally for me, is the complete focus on Japanese base ball. I have no idea about base ball, least of all about the Japanese base ball league.
As he has written in many places the connection between his literary career and fate of his favourite team, The Yakult Swallows. Both took an upward turn in the same year. Through him following over the years he has written about his personal life and career. He first started jotting down poetries on the base ball games and players. He in fact self published the collection of these poetries. He has given many of these poetries in this story. But all Greek and Latin to me because of the theme.
About his personal life, readers get to know he had a difficult relationship with his father although in the end they reconciled. It feels as if all the male writers have some kind of father issue.
Although I could not understand most parts but I could understand the underlying feeling of nostalgia and the strong emotion for a sports team
3 stars
8. First Person Singular
The narrator is a writer. One day he feels like doing few things different from his usual routine. Then his life changed a lot. The premise may give little 1Q84 vibe. The story is a typical Murakami absurdist and surrealistic. This story works for me.
5 stars
My Two Pennies
Here only 3 stories in this collection are brand new. Some stories are published before and some stories are not even proper stories, only reminiscent. In the whole book felt like collection of reminiscences rather than short story collection. Maybe the narrators are not literally Murakami always but the narrators are always figuratively Murakami. The narrator has too much of the writer’s personality in him.
For instance the narrator is generally a writer who in flashback thinking about some strange incident from his youth. Secodly, the common theme in most of the stories is music. We know how important music is for Murakami.
His style of hyper description is something I always love to read, although I am not a big fan of description in narration in general. The way he has described music in this book is a revelation. In fact, it makes sense to me although I am ignorant of finer points and detail techniques of music
Along description I always enjoy reading the conversations among characters in his books. But in this book there are few conversations which I find forced and unnatural. For instance I can’t talk about classical music deeply if I meet myself somewhere random. Because I don’t know the difference between Schumann and a hole. There should be some indication what to talk to whom for the natural feel.
I would not rank this collection highly among all his works. His diehard fans would of course love to read more about him. But for a casual fan or a fresher to Murakami works the book is not recommended at all. Hard core music fans would love the book.
I hope he publishes a novel soon. Meanwhile I will keep on rereading his existing novels.
Musings 
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