Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami | A Bestselling Collection of Short Stories | A Deeply Reflective and Philosophical Look at Loneliness Paperback – 17 May 2018

Must buy for anyone looking to start reading Murakami. Each of these stories take you to a different journey. A journey not many writers take you to.

A good collection of some fine stories about Men truly without Women. Few like ‘Drive My Car’, ‘Scheherazade’ or ‘Yesterday’ carry the trademark Murakami open endings. A couple, like ‘The Independent Organ’ or ‘Kino’ almost have resolved endings though there is always some room for interpreting the climaxes in more than one way in a Murakami story.The Men in these stories come across as pallid and depressed because they are deprived of a deep involvement with their women. Only in ‘Samsa in Love’ where - when outside Prague was being marauded by Germans - the protagonist (who just metamorphosed into Gregor Samsa) finds hope in the hunchbacked woman with a sharp tongue; in all other stories, the men suffer in a soulless desolation with the loss or lack of women. How incomplete man is in this state and in what different senses he depends on them for meaningful existence is splendidly displayed in each story.For the Murakami fans the treats are there all along: Jazz, whiskey, expensive wines, running, cats, hat tips to Beatles, Kafka to name a few. Magical realism is represented but the stories are more hinged than Murakami’s typical writing. As we go along the book the stories transform from superficially mundane to deeply Existential ones, the last one ‘Men without Women’ being practically abstract.The best part of the book, other than the superb way in which he unravels the minds of his characters, is the writing. The pacing of the stories is so splendidly measured one doesn’t have to pause to think, but can ruminate as one goes along. Of course, there are mystical gems which one would read and retread (“Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.” - Samsa in Love).Personally the only reservation I have about Murakami’s writing is the reams of third party narration. Entire characters and stories are presented in staid tones. In some instances this renders some stories less evocative. The most striking example for me was ‘The Independent Organ’. For some it may look like a drab narrative about the life of a boring man: such is the monotony of narrative. Whereas layered under this simple narrative is an enquiry of existence, meaning of life and the philosophical question of suicide, their import would have certainly been amplified had there been more drama. But then, to allow you to take as much as you can from each story is perhaps the quintessential a Murakami!Happy reading!!

What I loved most about this book is how it subtly examines the emotional struggles of men who find themselves disconnected from the women in their lives—whether through separation, loss, or emotional distance. The themes are universal, and the way Murakami captures the quiet, almost invisible pain of his characters is incredibly moving. Some stories are more straightforward, while others have that signature surrealism that makes Murakami’s work so captivating.

Having a problem with open endings or unanswered questions, this book is a gripping read but doesn't let you get over the suspense even after you've finished it. There's a lot of cliffhangers that all the stories leave as they seem like extracts. The incomplete nature of the book keeps your thirst for clarifications unquenched. Enjoyable but leaves one restless.

It's a good Read

All the stories were unfinished without women. Every story had its sorrow ... The world without women would be like sailing without a compass

Every short story depicts how men are emotionally attached with women and also explains how they felt with the loss.

Men Without Women in what it promised to be - vague, strange, dark, forbidding, foreboding. Every story ends with a comma, never a full stop - in a euphemistic sense that is. The story has not a definite end nor a definite beginning. It could have started anywhere and ended anywhere. If one were to shuffle the passages, began where it ended and ended where it began, it would make no difference to the story. It would still flow and meander through the mind, forming its own path, its own story, its own meaning.Here we meet Scheherzade, as mysterious as the heroin of Arabian Nights, who makes love and then tells a story, and then becomes the story herself. We meet Kino, who does not know whether he is in love or not, Samsa, who is positively in love and then positively heart broken... so much that he can become the oblivion he wishes to become. Each story of a man, a woman in his life, an inability to hold the woman he so dearly wants to hold and then regret. At the end, there is regret.The reference to Japanese life is refreshing. Here is a glimpse of another culture, another people, another way of thinking, another life. One has read too much English fiction set in America or Britain, and lately India. But the men and the women... they are the same. Nothing dramatic happens, yet one feels the joy and the sorrow, the latter more often than the former.Murakami writes not for the young. Not for those who have not seen pain and loss in relationships yet. The men in his stories have lived their lives, have experienced love and loss and are now at a stage where they can look back at their lives, the women they had and grieve about what could have been but isn't.