Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Stories (Vintage International)

I should preface this by saying that I have been a huge Murakami fan for years, although I had never gotten around to reading this particular book. Anyway, I was very predisposed toward liking it a lot when I picked it up and was not disappointed. I have to admit that there are one or two stories that struck me as being kind of goofy, with no particular point that I could discern (The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes being perhaps the most egregious example). But the majority of the stories are vintage Murakami - engaging, mysterious, surreal yet written in an almost matter-of-fact voice.The stories are ordered chronologically, which adds additional interest. The reader gets to trace the development of Murakami's style over the years, and while I felt the best stories come toward the end of the book (the last six stories go by in a blur they are so good), the early stories are great as well.Very highly recommended.

I just discovered Haruki Murakami with this amazing book of short stories!Each story is entirely different from the others, keeps you endlessly curious as to what the next story will say. My favorites were: "Tony Takitani", "A Poor Aunt Story" and "Where I'm Likely to Find it", but I loved them all! I think Murakami's work is completely unique. I am now reading his novel, "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the WOrld". I started it yesterday, and didn't put it down til 3 a.m. "Blind WIllow, Sleeping Woman", is a beautifu collection of short stories that you will want to read and reread. Murakami is now one of my three favorite short story writers, ( along with Italo Calvino, andDostoevsky) ---all three also, obviously, for their novels as well.I plan to read Murakami's entire oeuvre, it is completely addicting!

I personally think Murakami's novels are more compelling than his short fiction, so that's where I'd start if I'd never read him before. I'm glad I did so before coming to these stories or I might not have kept reading his work. That's not to say the stories in "Blind Willow" are bad or that they aren't representative of Murakami's writing. All the Murakami elements are there: disappearances, animals, strange occurrences. Murakami's characters are always searching for something. Sometimes the search is literal, as in "Dabchick," where a man on his first day of work is trying to find the place of his employment, or "Where I'm Likely to Find It," about an investigator who searches for a man who vanished in his own building. This searching corresponds with the nature of the protagonists. At first I thought of them as naive, but I think Murakami's protagonists are merely open to wonder. They are the people who embrace the weirdness, of which there is plenty, such as a man who vomits without cause for days on end, an "ice man," a surfer killed by a shark, and a talking monkey. But the characters seem to accept these strange events at face value. The truly strange things to them--the things they can't figure out--seem to be themselves, and each other. There are a lot of sideways, or glancing, relationships in these stories: two strangers at a resort, a woman confronting the narrator while searching for her estranged boyfriend, a woman and a cut-rate therapist, the mother of the shark victim and some young surfers. The true connections seem to be chance encounters while the relationships in the stories are more strained. This isn't a new observation, but Murakami's work is reminiscent of David Lynch's. Both use humor and commonplace settings juxtaposed against shocking or deeply revelatory events. One example is the story "Crabs," in which a couple vacationing in Singapore find a restaurant serving only crabs and eat there repeatedly. Then one night the man gets sick and vomits up the crab he's eaten, only to find it riddled with worms. It's a jarring image, one that stuck with me, and symbolic of the way the relationship was turning. While the typical Murakami strangeness abounds in "Blind Willow," the author also shows his broad range. He can write in a more realistic vein, and he's unafraid to explore topics like suicide, death, and grief. He's also an international author who writes convincingly of diverse settings and who uses American pop culture references. At times it's easy to forget he's a Japanese author writing about Japanese characters. Maybe this is why he's so great: he doesn't pay attention to the limits other writers place on themselves but follows his intuition and takes risks. For that reason alone, Murakami is worth reading and studying.

This is my first purchase on Kindle for PC. I bought it because I heard about the short story, Hanalei Bay, a beautiful place on the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which I visited about a year ago. The story is part of this collection.In another review, I described Hanalei Bay as a haunting short story about a Japanese woman who arrives in Kauai after her son dies while surfing and who returns each year to sit on the beach and sometimes play the piano in Hanalei. A ghost appears for the briefest of moments in the story, but only to two surfers who hitchhiked to Hanalei. More haunting to me still is the vision that suggests that the paradise I visited may be pierced to reveal shark attacks and drownings and worse, maybe, all of which is hard to imagine sitting on its beaches looking out at the water and the sky. The style might be called haunting, too, if it weren't so clean. This was a find.As for the Kindle for PC form, I was satisfied with the purchase. The quality is good, the price is good. I suspect the original publication in book form was automatically re-formatted to fit the PC screen. It felt strange to have no page numbers, and there were page breaks no printer would have allowed ("widows and orphans").

more diverse than the Elephant Vanishes. a great collection of open ended stories to keep you guessing and thinking.Murakami's short stories are everything I/you like about his longer works while being easy to read one or more in one sitting.very enjoyable and rereadable.

I still need to actually read the book but fair warning here.. my entire book has the text at an angle making reading this very annoying. All the pages were cut off center with the text tilting to the side. The rating is purely on the quality of the book print.

My favourite story is Haneily Bay. Ice man is beyond explanation I look forward towards reading The Elephant Vanishes.

It looks like I got sent an old used book. The cover was creased and the corners were damaged. There was some sort of ''pressed'' mark on the front cover

This is my 1st book by the author - actually 1.5th. Ages ago I tried to read his famous Norwegian Wood, but couldn’t enter into the story and didn’t finish it. Since then, I’ve been avoiding this author’s books. Then I read a good article about his work recently and decided try to enter his world once again. It worked this time - I finished this collection with great speed and throughly enjoyed all the tales in it.So if you are wondering whether or not you want spend your time reading his books, I recommend to try this collection. I think you won’t be disappointed.

Aún lo estoy leyendo, entretenido, útil para practicar inglés

Arrived on time. It was a gift to a friend.