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3.61 AVERAGE
3.61 AVERAGE
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Infidelity, Sexual content
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Sexual violence
emotional
reflective
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
¿2.5?
Me gustó leer este libro porque me dejó muy en claro lo que me encanta y lo que detesto de Murakami. Me encanta que tiene buenísimas ideas, Murakami sería un gran guionista de cine para una serie o algo así: es divertido, dinámico y la repetición obsesiva de sus temas predilectos hace muy digerible lo que escribe. Detesto sus metáforas pretenciosas, la ejecución floja y deshilachada de sus narraciones, la vacuidad de sus personajes. Hay en este libro cuentos me me gustaron, pero que tienen un manchón de mamonería en medio que me impidió disfrutarlos tanto como hubiera podido. Otros son atroces. Me quedo en medio, de nuevo. Hasta ahora, lo único que podría recomendar de Murakami es la "Crónica...".
Me gustó leer este libro porque me dejó muy en claro lo que me encanta y lo que detesto de Murakami. Me encanta que tiene buenísimas ideas, Murakami sería un gran guionista de cine para una serie o algo así: es divertido, dinámico y la repetición obsesiva de sus temas predilectos hace muy digerible lo que escribe. Detesto sus metáforas pretenciosas, la ejecución floja y deshilachada de sus narraciones, la vacuidad de sus personajes. Hay en este libro cuentos me me gustaron, pero que tienen un manchón de mamonería en medio que me impidió disfrutarlos tanto como hubiera podido. Otros son atroces. Me quedo en medio, de nuevo. Hasta ahora, lo único que podría recomendar de Murakami es la "Crónica...".
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Story collection from Murakami, not the best, lots of sad lonely horny men. The most ridicilous one is about Gregor Samsa, where he turns back from the bug into a man, and there is a hunchbacked locksmith girl, he asks her about her bra, she accuses him of harrasment, but it all turns well in the end? City is under occupation for some reason.
Terrible, women caracterisation is completely messed up. I’ll think carefully about do I want to keep reading Murakami…
Terrible, women caracterisation is completely messed up. I’ll think carefully about do I want to keep reading Murakami…
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Murakami really outstepped himself this time with coffee-shop philosophy, meaningless sex, overuse of cliché and bland, meandering, empty sentimentality.
I wouldn't even say this collection is much worse than his usual work - though it's certainly his worst short story collection.
This review didn't begin so negatively because I hate the author and the kind of person who's attracted to his style; on the contrary, I've read his entire oeuvre, more or less, and enjoyed a decent majority of his works. The criticisms of Murakami's style are well-known at this point: he has a bag of narrative or aesthetic tricks, and there isn't a single thing in one of his stories he hasn't repeated somewhere else. The pervasive reality of Murakami's lack of imagination hiding behind stylistic quirks and surreal mini-scenes is so encompassing that I feel that the only kind of person who should consider reading this collection is someone that hasn't read Murakami before.
I'm not really sure he has any book specifically loved 'by the fans', because the repetitive nature of his writing ensures nobody can, as I have, read all of Murakami's novels without hating his style. He's a casual read, uncomplicated but mostly superficially pleasing, like the bland emotionless sexual encounters in 95% of everything he writes.
There's only so many times one can read about a relatively handsome Japanese man, in his late-thirties or maybe middle-age, who likes jazz and cooking and being a milquetoast zombie at once content and uneasy with his vapid life, without thinking that maybe Murakami isn't writing about some aspect of the human condition, or the plight of men, or something like that: maybe he's just putting himself into every novel, adding a weird dream or two, a cat, some sort of mundane fantastical event that goes unexplained, and repeating until the publishers phone up and say it's time for him to make them more money.
I became interested in Murakami's writing as a teenager because I was a big manga and JRPG nerd, and wanted to continue obsessing over Japan while gaining some sort of literary foothold that put me above the unwashed nerdy masses. He was an easy read while channeling an ineffable sensibility, and he was big into Anglo-American culture so I could understand most of his references. I might reread The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle sometime down the line and discover that there's still a lot in Murakami's style I enjoy.
For the most part, I can only conclude I've outgrown him. He didn't change; I did. By that line of thinking, maybe I shouldn't be making a value judgment of his work, if I've just come to a change of taste, right? Well, no. His prose is clunky at best, profoundly meaningless at its most infuriating. This is still a pretty bad short story collection, but if you like it, you're in luck! You'll like everything Murakami's ever written right up until the moment you realise you hate him.
I wouldn't even say this collection is much worse than his usual work - though it's certainly his worst short story collection.
This review didn't begin so negatively because I hate the author and the kind of person who's attracted to his style; on the contrary, I've read his entire oeuvre, more or less, and enjoyed a decent majority of his works. The criticisms of Murakami's style are well-known at this point: he has a bag of narrative or aesthetic tricks, and there isn't a single thing in one of his stories he hasn't repeated somewhere else. The pervasive reality of Murakami's lack of imagination hiding behind stylistic quirks and surreal mini-scenes is so encompassing that I feel that the only kind of person who should consider reading this collection is someone that hasn't read Murakami before.
I'm not really sure he has any book specifically loved 'by the fans', because the repetitive nature of his writing ensures nobody can, as I have, read all of Murakami's novels without hating his style. He's a casual read, uncomplicated but mostly superficially pleasing, like the bland emotionless sexual encounters in 95% of everything he writes.
There's only so many times one can read about a relatively handsome Japanese man, in his late-thirties or maybe middle-age, who likes jazz and cooking and being a milquetoast zombie at once content and uneasy with his vapid life, without thinking that maybe Murakami isn't writing about some aspect of the human condition, or the plight of men, or something like that: maybe he's just putting himself into every novel, adding a weird dream or two, a cat, some sort of mundane fantastical event that goes unexplained, and repeating until the publishers phone up and say it's time for him to make them more money.
I became interested in Murakami's writing as a teenager because I was a big manga and JRPG nerd, and wanted to continue obsessing over Japan while gaining some sort of literary foothold that put me above the unwashed nerdy masses. He was an easy read while channeling an ineffable sensibility, and he was big into Anglo-American culture so I could understand most of his references. I might reread The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle sometime down the line and discover that there's still a lot in Murakami's style I enjoy.
For the most part, I can only conclude I've outgrown him. He didn't change; I did. By that line of thinking, maybe I shouldn't be making a value judgment of his work, if I've just come to a change of taste, right? Well, no. His prose is clunky at best, profoundly meaningless at its most infuriating. This is still a pretty bad short story collection, but if you like it, you're in luck! You'll like everything Murakami's ever written right up until the moment you realise you hate him.