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.