This is my first post of the new year!!! Happy new year to you all. I hope this new is fruitful to everyone and you take the steps to continue enriching your lives. I will be posting a few more post dealing with items from last year if you don't mind. If this is a problem then you don't read this blog constantly. You must have just stumbled upon this this one sole post. I'm always late posting about things but, for better or for worse, I hope that you read these entries for my thoughts and not for how fast I can post about something.
With that out in the air, Murakami Haruki is a big Japanese author that most people around the world should know. At least if your a reader of nonfiction like me…. He has had his works translated into over fifty languages and had obtained many literature awards for his real but abstract writing style. Men Without Women is his collection of short stories originally released in 2014 in Japan. North American got the release just last year and I decided to pick up a copy on a whim.
Let's start by saying that before I opened up Men Without Women, I had a sort of relationship with Murakami's previous works. All his works are not to my liking basically because some of his books are too abstract for me. At times so abstract to the point that the pages are fantasy excluding any hint of realism. I enjoy stories that are abstract or fantasy until the writing becomes unstable. This is the sum up of many of Murakami's books for me. I rather avoid the books about the random missing talking cats and such all that. My favorite books by him however are, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, After Dark(which is abstract but contains sources of realism.), Norwegian Wood etc. Without Women could fall right inline with the novels I just named above. Only difference is the novel contains short stories instead of full chapters. You might call this format the book's undoing. Each story is a reference to the title with the last story sharing the same name as the book. Men living their lives without the women that made strong impacts on them. A huge number of pages are the men remembering the women they have lost. These women represent a strong message of women's femininity that can at times be as strong as the brute strength of a man. These women can't particularly be called good women. The take on all the traits that a man is known for. They just do it without getting caught. Women have always been beings that knew how to maneuver their way around men. Even using men to get what they want. Murakami wants to prove this point with these short stories. The stories go down the wrong road when some of them feel strangely incomplete. One story felt like the narrative was forced back on the male character toward the conclusion just so the story didn't need any solid closure. While much of the story was focused on the female character telling her story. I hated being left in the dark after getting invested in the story. The same story dives into issues dealing with dark human desire introduced in the form of a crush. I had a little reliability to the events if I'm to be truthful. We all have been there with liking someone to the point of wanting to know all about them. Normal humans usually don't take it to the point the book did but we all have dark desires inside of us deep down. I think my favorite of the stories was the ver first one presented in the book and Yesterday. I saw myself in two of the characters and enjoyed the ability to relate to them. Men Without Women is a good medium to shedding light on the strengths of women along with the effects these strengths have on the opposite gender.Recommendation of this book would be a choice of mine if you can get this book in paperback for a cheaper price and you're just reading it on your spare time while lounging around the cafe. The novel is a quick read in content that to me, isn't his best works. Don't make the mistake of paying top dollar for the hardback like I did. Let's leave mistakes like that in 2017.
HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL*****
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