Sam's review
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
Sam's review
rating:
bookshelves: shortfiction
recommended for: anyone
status: Read in February, 2007
rating:
bookshelves: shortfiction
recommended for: anyone
status: Read in February, 2007
While Murakami's novels are clearly more popular in America than any other living Japanese writer, his short fiction, while widely published in The New Yorker and other American magazines, has only been collected once in an English translation. Keeping in mind that Murakami has been writing short fiction at a pretty fast clip sing the late seventies in Japan, that adds up to a lot of untranslated work. So it comes as no surprise that the second collection of his short fiction, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is pretty astounding. Murakami's primary style, a sort of off-the-cuff surrealism that makes a woman being eaten by her cats seem totally normal, works best in short bursts; before you know it, a man meeting a woman at a party becomes inextricably linked with a bunch of miners trying to escape a cave-in, and everybody gets a vision of death. Good stuff! Maybe even a landmark in the development of short fiction!
Your review stimulated to try Murakami again, this time with short stories. Thank you especially for the capsule descriptions of several of the ones you likes.
