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A review by zena_ryder
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
challenging
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I guess profundity is in the brain of the beholder. You can read a story and find it profound, and I can read a story and find it confusing and meaningless — and we can both be right. (Do you agree?)
However, one attempt at profundity in these stories ticked me off. (Although it no doubt appeals to plenty of other readers.)
I really loved the other six stories, though, so this book’s still a 5 star read for me! And I look forward to reading more Murakami. His characters are so believable and wonderful — both the ones who are ‘ordinary’ (like most of use are) and the ones who are ‘quirky’ (and don’t we all have our quirks?).
I love how his characters can do odd things that somehow make perfect sense for that character. For example, one of the characters learns and then fully adopts a new dialect of Japanese — which seems similar to learning a whole new language — for no really good reason. He wanted to and he did. Creating fully-formed characters and developing their relationships within a short space is remarkable. The stories reveal so much about the characters’ personalities and emotions. I loved all that!
To turn to the one story that bugged me: Kino
I loved many things about the story. It’s snapshot of an ‘ordinary’ character at a crucial time in his life (getting divorced after discovering his wife is having an affair with one of his colleagues). He quits his job and opens a bar. Some mysterious patrons come into the bar and their lives intersect with Kino’s for a while, and loose ends aren’t tied up. I’m totally OK with that. In fact, I like it. Life is like that. We don’t always have the closure of knowing what happened to someone, or understanding an event we didn’t witness. That open-endedness isn’t the problem I have with the story.
What I didn’t like is that towards the end of the story, it got completely weird and obscure. Call it magical realism, if you like. But I have no idea what it was supposed to mean (if anything). Obscurity is not profundity. (If you understand it and feel it’s profound, that’s great. Or if you can live with obscurity and are happy with the freedom to interpret it and supply your own meaning, that’s great too. Rock on.)
Personally, I can’t stand obscurity. That doesn’t mean I need or want everything spelled out in a story. But if a story ends in a way that makes no sense, or is sooooo open to interpretation that every reader could come up with a different meaning, that bugs me big time. And that’s the case with Kino.
Another thing that bothered me about Kino is the promise to the reader at the beginning of the story is broken. Kino started off realistic and then took a turn into weird obscurity at the end. In contrast, I had no problem with the largely metaphorical titular story or with the wonderful magical realist story Samsa in Love, which begins: "He woke to discover that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa." Those stories delivered on the promises given to the reader at their beginnings. Not so with Kino. They also made sense, they had meaning.
One final note: The narrators and focal characters sometimes have superficial or objectifying attitudes towards women, and this often contributes to their unhappiness. There’s also some sexual abuse. It’s not depicted, but the resulting scars are. Something to be aware of if you plan to read these stories.
However, one attempt at profundity in these stories ticked me off. (Although it no doubt appeals to plenty of other readers.)
I really loved the other six stories, though, so this book’s still a 5 star read for me! And I look forward to reading more Murakami. His characters are so believable and wonderful — both the ones who are ‘ordinary’ (like most of use are) and the ones who are ‘quirky’ (and don’t we all have our quirks?).
I love how his characters can do odd things that somehow make perfect sense for that character. For example, one of the characters learns and then fully adopts a new dialect of Japanese — which seems similar to learning a whole new language — for no really good reason. He wanted to and he did. Creating fully-formed characters and developing their relationships within a short space is remarkable. The stories reveal so much about the characters’ personalities and emotions. I loved all that!
To turn to the one story that bugged me: Kino
I loved many things about the story. It’s snapshot of an ‘ordinary’ character at a crucial time in his life (getting divorced after discovering his wife is having an affair with one of his colleagues). He quits his job and opens a bar. Some mysterious patrons come into the bar and their lives intersect with Kino’s for a while, and loose ends aren’t tied up. I’m totally OK with that. In fact, I like it. Life is like that. We don’t always have the closure of knowing what happened to someone, or understanding an event we didn’t witness. That open-endedness isn’t the problem I have with the story.
What I didn’t like is that towards the end of the story, it got completely weird and obscure. Call it magical realism, if you like. But I have no idea what it was supposed to mean (if anything). Obscurity is not profundity. (If you understand it and feel it’s profound, that’s great. Or if you can live with obscurity and are happy with the freedom to interpret it and supply your own meaning, that’s great too. Rock on.)
Personally, I can’t stand obscurity. That doesn’t mean I need or want everything spelled out in a story. But if a story ends in a way that makes no sense, or is sooooo open to interpretation that every reader could come up with a different meaning, that bugs me big time. And that’s the case with Kino.
Another thing that bothered me about Kino is the promise to the reader at the beginning of the story is broken. Kino started off realistic and then took a turn into weird obscurity at the end. In contrast, I had no problem with the largely metaphorical titular story or with the wonderful magical realist story Samsa in Love, which begins: "He woke to discover that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa." Those stories delivered on the promises given to the reader at their beginnings. Not so with Kino. They also made sense, they had meaning.
One final note: The narrators and focal characters sometimes have superficial or objectifying attitudes towards women, and this often contributes to their unhappiness. There’s also some sexual abuse. It’s not depicted, but the resulting scars are. Something to be aware of if you plan to read these stories.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexual violence