Men Without Women
Stories
-
-
4.6 • 32 Ratings
-
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Including the story "Drive My Car”—now an Academy Award–nominated film—this collection from the internationally acclaimed author "examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers" (Barack Obama).
The much-anticipated new short story collection from the beloved Haruki Murakami--his first major new work of fiction since the #1 New York Times bestselling Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage--Men Without Women showcases the author at the peak of his powers. Across seven tales, Murakami draws his piercing observation to the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. 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, in this collection Haruki Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this collection of new stories, Murakami (1Q84) returns to familiar themes of youthful regrets, untenable romantic triangles, strange manifestations of sexual frustration, and inexplicable, often otherworldly happenings while dipping into the lives of seven middle-aged men, each caught up in the passions of a mysterious woman. In "Drive My Car," a stage actor hires a new driver, his first female chauffeur. Between rehearsing lines and listening to classic rock, the normally reticent widower begins to chat with the young driver, eventually revealing a friendship he formed with one of his former wife's lovers. In "Yesterday," a man who works at a coffee shop convinces a coworker to date his girlfriend while he works to pass his university entrance exams. In "An Independent Organ," a plastic surgeon who lives a contrived life of well-managed affairs descends into depression and starves himself to death after falling in (unrequited) love with one of his liaisons. Although the plotting can be repetitive, Murakami's ability to center the stories on sentimental but precise details creates a long-lasting resonance. For instance, the narrator of "An Independent Organ" can never use a squash racket the plastic surgeon left him: the lightness reminds him of his frail, dying body. In "Scheherazade," the standout of the collection, a man who can never be outside for unexplained reasons develops a bond with his in-home caretaker, who tells him stories after they have sex. She remembers being a lamprey in a former life and misses the profound silence of the sea floor.
