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A review by kate_in_a_book
Birthday Stories by Haruki Murakami
3.0
The book started life as a collection of works in English translated into Japanese by Murakami, with an added short story of his own that he wrote specially. For this English edition he has written an introduction about the curation process and perhaps reading this first gave me a slightly negative start. First, Murakami freely admits that he is not a big birthday person himself and that the stories he found tend to be dark and unhappy. Second, he struggled to find enough stories and ended up asking friends, editors and agents for ideas, which does not suggest a rich treasure trove from which to curate a “best of”.
You can probably tell from my tone that I wasn’t blown away. None of the stories are bad, by any means. There is some beautiful writing and some storylines have lingered in my brain, which I consider a positive sign. But none of them stunned or surprised me either.
Arguably, Murakami’s own feelings about birthdays are reflected in his choices, because in most of these stories, the fact it is someone’s birthday is almost arbitrary, at most a reason for events to be imbued with extra significance that the main character does not feel to be necessary. There is also a hint of Murakami’s writing style, in that I tended to find the stories slightly cold and detached – observations of life rather than emotional explorations. And that works perfectly fine in every case, but a little more variety of tone and style might have helped make the book more enjoyable, at least for me.
- See my full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2016/01/12/one-of-them-would-die-first/
You can probably tell from my tone that I wasn’t blown away. None of the stories are bad, by any means. There is some beautiful writing and some storylines have lingered in my brain, which I consider a positive sign. But none of them stunned or surprised me either.
Arguably, Murakami’s own feelings about birthdays are reflected in his choices, because in most of these stories, the fact it is someone’s birthday is almost arbitrary, at most a reason for events to be imbued with extra significance that the main character does not feel to be necessary. There is also a hint of Murakami’s writing style, in that I tended to find the stories slightly cold and detached – observations of life rather than emotional explorations. And that works perfectly fine in every case, but a little more variety of tone and style might have helped make the book more enjoyable, at least for me.
- See my full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2016/01/12/one-of-them-would-die-first/