Murakami’s latest – Men without
Women – a collection of short stories about men living in solitude, is unique
for his writing style. As a writer of fabulously surreal imagination, Men without
Women might seem deceptively simplistic. But simple, it is not. Instead of
diving in to what can only be called the subconscious realm, and bringing to the surface some
dazzling literary pearls, as he is usually inclined to do; in his latest book, Murakami plunges into the realm of the heart.
Each of the stories has a woman
playing a pivotal role in the protagonist’s life, and explores what awakening
to her, in a specific context, does to his heart and mind. So while one man
starves himself to death on discovering that the love of his life was in fact,
a cheat; another closes his heart even to himself, on discovering his wife’s
adultery, leading to strange consequences, and yet another comes to a deeper
understanding and ultimately peace, after tormenting his mind over his unresolved experience with his wife, over the course of the story. For other men, their experiences with
women are about hope and purpose. But the deepest dive Murakami takes into
exploring emotion, is in the story titled ‘Men without Women’, the one story
without a timeline after an initial trigger, but only an exploration within.
Men without Women is not for
every Murakami fan. I was particularly disappointed at the lack of magic
realism, having grown my literary sensibilities over the past decade or so with
his two big novels – Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84, which bring out Murakami’s
creative flair in all its glory. But it does offer a different kind of experience.
It has the ache of loss, the wonder of love and the comfort of predictability
as key themes, each of which is experienced by the protagonists across the
stories. It is a rare book from a master storyteller that explores the male
mind’s reaction, often to romantic love, with careful detail, and even without
the usual Murakami flourishes, it is well worth a read.
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