Joshua's review
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Vintage International)
by Haruki Murakami
Joshua's review
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Vintage International) by Haruki Murakami
Joshua's review
rating:
recommended for: Anyone who likes unique and interesting short stories
I buy everything that this man writes, but I would have bought this solely for the short story Tony Takitani. I first read that one story in the New Yorker in 2002. I instantly fell in love with it. While some may disagree, I thought the story about a simple man who marries a woman with an obsession with buying shoes and their eventual downfall and release was near perfect. I own many of the stories in one form of another that appear in this book, and yet to see them all collected together is a joy in itself. Many accuse H. Murakami of being too western in his writing. His stories take place in jazz clubs, Denny's, and deal with Japanese characters that act and think in western ways. However, I think this is a poor assumption of H. Murakami's writing skills. He is able to take very Japanese characters and make them accessible to all cultures. His characters only seem very westernized because we perceive them that way. As a person who has studied a lot about Japanese and Western culture...more
