The name: Murakami (Kyoto, 1949) seems to come up repeatedly as a candidate for the Noble Prize for Literature. Apart from his quality as a novelist, sales of his books put him on best seller’s lists. This present book is a collection of 17 short stories. Common to each story is the setting: scenes from ordinary daily Japanese life. The protagonist, different in each story is faced with some detail or anomalous intrusion, in such a fashion that as the reader digests the situation, the strength of the personage is seen clearly. No doubt this is a literary device of Murakami’s to illuminate the anodyne profiles of his ordinary characters, boring protagonists of a routine life. The insertion of unusual but never tragic stories, intrigues the reader, holds attention and so the witty, charming, easy style, full of flair and wit is enjoyed.
The ideological orientation of the collection clearly underlines the senselessness of domestic or professional routine. The author seems to be saying that all human activity ends in nothing, at least for his Japanese characters. The stories, a mixture as has been said, of the ordinary and the unreal, also show a pagan permissiveness. Some live the natural law, others freely flaunt them (fornication, adultery, drugs etc.) All according to perennial human laws from Homer to our own global village. Murakami is talented at giving portraits of the human species under original sin. Although usually refined in scenes of physical relations, there is one passage with explicit descriptions.
F.J. (España, 2016)