Saturday, December 5, 2015

BLIND WILLOW , SLEEPING WOMAN by HARUKI MURAKAMI

According to Murakami a good writer should " observe,observe, observe and only then judge.".Murakami never writes short stories whilst writing a Novel and never writes Novels whilst writing short stories.

This collection of short stories are garnered over a period of some decades , not in chronological or even thematic order , this gives the stories a feel of sleeping thoughts that barely crystallise before the reader is jolted awake , having them to fill in the gaps and lace together his own threads about where the stories come and go , if at all.

A lot of the stories will appear to be familiar as they were incorporated into his Novels , especially Norwegian Wood , showing that though the writing process for Novels and Short Stories is apart they are not exclusive but mutually compatible and can easily cross over to both formats to great effect , hence making some sense of the title.

This review from the Guardian captures the tone of the stories.

"In many of these stories, narrative tension is prolonged by a refusal to explain; Murakami's ghost stories and murder mysteries remain ghostly and mysterious. Has the serial adulterer been cursed, or does his nausea have nothing at all to do with his predilection for deceptive seduction? Murakami never says, and the result, as in so much of his work, is profoundly memorable."

The girl in the video review gives a fair account of the stories and their appeal.



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