[Review] after the quake – Haruki Murakami

After the Quake cover courtesy of Goodreads

Everytime I read a Haruki Murakami book, I tend to think on why I made certain life decisions and then I call my mum. He’s got that effect on me for some reason.

So I decided to call my mum first before I open this book. Still called her again after I finished it two days later. Damn you Murakami.

Synopsis (edited from Wikipedia)

‘after the quake’ is a collection of 6 short stories, written between 1999 and 2000. First published in Japan in 2000, it was released in English as after the quake in 2002 (translator Jay Rubin notes that Murakami “insisted” the title “should be all lower-case”).

The stories focus on the aftermath of the ’95 Kobe earthquake from different people’s perspectives. It is a crafted emotional piece that incites true emotion rather than bewildered wonderment. (my own interpretation, not Wikipedia’s)

In detail

The six stories are as follows:

• UFO in Kushiro
• Landscape with Flatiron
• All God’s Children Can Dance
• Thailand
• Super-Frog Saves Tokyo
• Honey Pie

Murakami uses his characters to build the story rather than a narrative or lengthy back story. His forays into the supernatural are not random, but not as structured as other writers.

Take for instance the Super-Frog story. I spent most of the time wondering where he was going with this. Then I spent the rest wondering how this could even make sense taking into account psychosis and imagination. At the end I understood what he was trying to do – build a fantasy around an ordinary man and give him the power to save a city even if it is just within his mind.

Other stories are more emotional like Thailand, where conversation dominates. We’re never taken too deep into each character, but left to savour the moments of their lives. Therefore we never really know them, but still feel like we were part of something significant even if it is just for a moment.

If I had one complaint about the book, it was that it was too short. I understand this was a compilation, but I felt that each story could have become something greater, grander even, so that we could fall in love with each character the way we do with his other books.

So I recommend this to anyone who loves his writing and more importantly to those who understand that there is untold depth to characters, which we can never truly reach. Murakami never tries to reach it, but to give you an opportunity to glimpse, because he knows that it is enough to get us hooked on for more.

Rating: 8.5/10

You can purchase it on Amazon – both hardcopy or ebook. Good book stores should have it as well.

Peace.

[Book Review] South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

What the book is about (taken directly from Amazon)

In South of the Border, West of the Sun, the simple arc of a man’s life–with its attendant rhythms of success and disappointment–becomes the exquisite literary terrain of Haruki Murakami’s most haunting work. 

Born in 1951 in an affluent Tokyo suburb, Hajime–beginning in Japanese–has arrived at middle age wanting for almost nothing. The postwar years have brought him a fine marriage, two daughters, and an enviable career as the proprietor of two jazz clubs. Yet a nagging sense of inauthenticity about his success threatens Hajime’s happiness. And a boyhood memory of a wise, lonely girl named Shimamoto clouds his heart. 

When Shimamoto shows up one rainy night, now a breathtaking beauty with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. And the details of stolen moments past and present–a Nat King Cole melody, a face pressed against a window, a handful of ashes drifting downriver to the sea–threaten to undo him completely. Rich, mysterious, quietly dazzling, South of the Border, West of the Sun is Haruki Murakami’s wisest and most compelling fiction.

……………….

So I recently realised I really do love Murakami’s writing. He somehow manages to keep me hooked when I know I shouldn’t be, because it is weird and I am slightly afraid I will find a lot of myself in his most messed up characters. Maybe that’s what keeps me hooked.

In a way, one of his shortest books is also one of the deepest books. In no way does it take through a spiralling whirlwind of emotions that The Wind up Chronicle does, but it makes you rethink your life decisions and put yourself in his place. The simplicity of his writing in this book is refreshing and hauntingly deep at the same time.

At no time did I ever have to put down the book and shudder. I was hooked from page 1 till the end. Murakami took everything I thought I knew about living a normal life and told me to stuff it. He then decided I should learn about life the hard way and made his character infinitely relatable, showcasing how a life can change and how we can regret a perfect world.

Damn you Murakami.

Rating: 9/10

Peace.

[Book Review] The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

The Wind up Bird Chronicle

I am absolutely shattered after reading this book. It isn’t because it was difficult to read, it had nothing to do with the length. It had everything to do with the fact the Murakami is one twisted dude. His writing messes you up on the inside.

Here’s an example [possible spoiler, but not really]: I am reading about how a man loses his wife because she’s cheating on him. He then downward spirals. Of course in Murakami’s mind that means he also dreams a alternate reality where he meets a mystery woman in his dreams and drinks Cutty Sark whiskey. Did I also mention he has sex with another girls he has met before, but he only has sex with her in the dream.

Stop fucking my mind Murakami.

That being said, he is a great writer. Taking into account he writes in his native Japanese and someone has to translate his work, I can only imagine the intensity of his work in its original language.

How I imagine his writing process is that he writes the first few chapters in a calm friendly environment, then kisses his wife and kids goodbye, goes to an opium den and destroys his life for 2 months to write the rest of the book. He then cleans up his life, goes back to his wife and kids, all the while forgetting about the time he sold his body to get a little bit of money for the one ‘last fix’.

Anyhow, that’s just a guess on my part.

What the book is about

In a calm Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. That soon turns into himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria. The book delves into the pysche of a mild mannered man and explores the depravity of humanity from the eyes of the man. 

Rating: 8.5/10 only because it messed me up, so I refuse to give it a 9.

Give it a read people. It is definitely worth the buy.