First Person Singular: Stories

Murakami is such a strange writer to me because at one moment he expresses some element of the human psyche with such nuance and then he'll turn around and write some just ham-fisted like I'm-fourteen-and-this-is-deep style philosophizing, usually centered on women. There's one story here that starts “Of all the women I've known until now, she was the ugliest” that kind of hurt to read. A short story about how looks affect social status and personality and all that could have been interesting if handled correctly, but this was not that.

Anyways, not great. I still love Norwegian Wood though.

Not his best work. Not even one of his mediocre works. I thought this was a pretty lame attempt at trying to be Murakami, from Murakami himself. I thought the first short story (“Cream”) was fine and almost what I was looking for out of Murakami short stories, but it was mostly downhill and rock bottom from there (looking at you, “Caravel”. One can only read about Murakami's thoughts on ugly women for so long).

The only exception was “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey”, which I thought was fun and conjured up some amazing mental images. A talking monkey scrubbing someone's back and making smalltalk? Sure, I'm here for that.

I'd pass on this one though, even if you're a Murakami fan. Maybe for completion's sake once you've read just about everything else by him. It's a quick read, if nothing else.

One of the weaker entires from Murakami. Read after the quake just before and loved it much more. Not much stores that stay with you. The one with the money and with the beatles were the only even rememberable. For others I had to check the index to see the names and remember the stories.

Still an alright read. Just 8 stories so not much time needed to read.

If you like Murakami, read this last if you want to read the better of his first or if like me and planning to read them later, do give it a try earlier, especially before going to his other short story collections.