i’ve been kind of hesitant on murakami—partially a wariness of the “genius” label often partnered with him. also because the few books i’ve read (Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart) had these weird female characters that creeped me out. friends of mine who had read other works by him related having similar responses, so i didn’t go out of my way to read much of his work. though last summer i read Underground, his nonfiction book about the Tokyo gas attacks where i found even some of his commentary of interviewees gave me that aversion reaction. recently though, The New Yorker printed a story of his, Ice Man, which is a great story and absent of any creepy-feelings-inducing aspects. so i was excited to find this collection of six short stories, all with the common theme of the Kobe earthquake of 1995. now i’m wondering if i just happened to stumble upon the books with odd characters that made a pattern of creepiness, as i didn’t find any of that here. in fact, i was again endangering my proper subway disembarking and was very sad to be finished with the book. (even if the last story ended on a kind of over-sentimental note. though it does make sense in context.)
what do you mean by “ordinary”–boring? i guess it just seemed like the women were always these fucked up people with all these problems while the men were usually kind of “super-manly.” like above-average in some way.
some of the main characters do have names in this book, or at least one–but it wasn’t mentioned until late in the story. does he always write in first person? i feel like there may have been a third-person narrative in this one, but i can’t remember.
the creepy girls – I hear you. For some reason i found that really satisfying. Ethereal almost. As though they weren’t really there, like they may have been hallucinations of the narrators. I’ve read a lot of Murakami’s stuff now, but one I have yet to make it past 30-odd pages is ‘hard boiled Wonderland and the end of the world’… I guess I have a limit to my love for magical realism.
i like the idea of hallucinations. like fantasies? that makes a lot of sense, actually. i never considered that at all.
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its interesting that you found the female characters creepy…i was just glad that for a change they weren’t ‘ordinary’ - not that murakami’s storylines always lend themselve to pure normalcy.
i find it interesting that none of the main characters ever have names. what does that say about them?