Men Without Women By Haruki Murakami: A Review

ORIGINAL TITLE:
女のいない男たち [Onna no inai otokotachi]
GENRE: Fiction, Short story collection.
PUBLISHER: Penguin
PAPERBACK: 288 pages
ISBN: 191121537X (ISBN13: 9781911215370)

“I find writing novels a challenge, writing stories a joy. If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden.”

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who find themselves alone in their own ways. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all.

Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic in this collection. 

This is my first Murakami read, Men Without Women explores the theme of love, loneliness, finding acceptance yet defining it all in such intricate & beautiful details that leaves a lasting impression. With seven little tales that are intriguing and mysterious just up to the right amount, there’s no end & beginning of this story. All the stories are filled with a question (or many) leaving the reader thristing for more information. The stories that puzzled me the most were ‘Yesterday’, ‘Samsa In Love’ & ‘Kino’.

Starting with ‘Drive My Car’: It all starts with an unsaid notion about driving, the difference in the driving flair of men
& women. Are men truly better drivers than women? Well, Kafuku believed so until he met Misaki, an effortless driver with a natural knack for driving & an intelligent woman, who only chooses to speaks occasionally she was everything Kafuku could ask for in a perfect driver, one who excels in shifting gears to an extent that the only way one can know is by the sound of it. They began to have an extremely work-oriented relationship with no-nonsense chattering, Misaki would drive around Kufuku as directed. The first two months, they found each other’s lives mysterious in their own way just like every reader does, but there’s a reason why we are who we are today. Slowly, they start becoming more comfortable in each other’s presence leading to heartfelt conversations which seem to fill the gaps of their life’s details, how Kafuku lost his wife, why was she having an affair before she died? He’s still left stuck in a maze of unanswered questions regretting not asking her wife while she was alive. “The question never ventured, the answer never proffered.”
We all are really actors of our lives like Kafuku who masks the pain & carries on living. Finding a perfect solution to every problem is impractical, sometimes, we have to make our own peace. Although the story ends abruptly, it was highly engaging! ( I would have read an entire novel based on Kafuku & Miskaki’s lives)

The second tale is named ‘Yesterday’ based on the Beatles song, which follows along with the fairly simple life of two college boys who find solace in each other’s friendship, working in a coffee shop, Tanimura & Kitaru. Kitaru had a girlfriend whom he loved the most, he could never figure out why she retracted when they got close to being physical. He suggests Tanimura date her, instead of letting other college boys take her out. Throughout this story, there are multiple questions to ponder over. The interpretation of dreams that Erika continually wakes up to, Kitaru leaving the shop abruptly. It just felt incomplete to me.

The third tale is the one that I found the most impactful called ‘An Independent Organ’, exploring to what bounds can love turn to destruction? Who in the world are we? Dr. Tokai leads a perfect life, dating multiple girls at the same time, but never falling in love until the age of 52 resulting in a terrible fate. Sparkling conversations, intimate secrets only to end up in a senseless void. There are difficult questions, you need to sit back and ponder over them after finishing the story. Take a moment to grasp all the happenings.
“Dr. Tokai – in a somewhat different sense – used this independent organ to fall in love. A function beyond his will. In hindsight, it’s very easy for someone else to sadly shake his head and smugly criticize another’s actions. But without the intervention of that kind of organ – the kind that elevates us to new heights, thrusts us down to the depths, throws our minds into chaos, reveals beautiful illusions, and sometimes even drives us to our death – our lives would indeed be indifferent and brusque. Or simply end up as a series of contrivances.”

“Scheherazade”, the fourth tale was the most unsettling, it felt incomplete but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a joy to devour it. “Kino” wasn’t for me, it was more than just black and white but all the more shades of grey that exist between them, investigating the mysterious disappearance of the tabby cat to showing up of snakes.
“Samsa in Love” is a play on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis & lastly “Men Without Women” collectively reflects the deeper meaning of loss from the hearts of men who have lived their lives, who have experienced loss & the mourning.

Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as ‘easily accessible, yet profoundly complex’. He can be located on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/harukimuraka…

Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences.