Tim's review

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
by Haruki Murakami

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9833.Blind_Willow_Sleeping_Woman?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166065765m/9833.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9833.Blind_Willow_Sleeping_Woman?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3354.Haruki_Murakami">Haruki Murakami</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7791116?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 3 of 5 stars<br/>I like to view short story collections in the same was as an album.  There are going to be some great songs, a couple of favorites and then some duds.  The same held true with this collection, and I think part of my ambivalence with this collection is that the really good stories I read in magazines already, so that when I came across the bad stories, they really stuck out.  As with all Murakami fiction there is a notion of disconnect, as characters struggle to make sense of the world around them.  It is like because of the mundaneness of our lives we are shut off to things, or perhaps are empty of a greater sense of the world around us.
<br/>The stories that stood out to me were, Birthday Girl, Hunting Knife, Airplane: or He Talks to Himself as If Reciting Poetry, Man-eating Cats, Hanalei Bay, and A Shinagawa Monkey.  The rest of the stories were either just okay or didn't make sense.  Two that stand out as not working were Dabchick and Sharpie Cakes.  If there was something I didn't get or missed, that's fine, the stories started in the bizarre and went basically nowhere.  What I appreciate though is that Murakami takes risks.  He's willing to go somewhere most writer's wouldn't in order to test out a new idea.  I think this experimental aspect gives Murakami's novels such a unique quality.  As if it is okay to fail in a short story in order to generate a good novel or just to push out with your imagination.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/544078?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Tim's review
rating:

bookshelves: modern-fiction, short-story-collections
status: Read in November, 2007

I like to view short story collections in the same was as an album. There are going to be some great songs, a couple of favorites and then some duds. The same held true with this collection, and I think part of my ambivalence with this collection is that the really good stories I read in magazines already, so that when I came across the bad stories, they really stuck out. As with all Murakami fiction there is a notion of disconnect, as characters struggle to make sense of the world around them. It is like because of the mundaneness of our lives we are shut off to things, or perhaps are empty of a greater sense of the world around us.
The stories that stood out to me were, Birthday Girl, Hunting Knife, Airplane: or He Talks to Himself as If Reciting Poetry, Man-eating Cats, Hanalei Bay, and A Shinagawa Monkey. The rest of the stories were either just okay or didn't make sense. Two that stand out as not working were Dabchick and Sharpie Cakes. If there was something I didn't get ...more

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