Book Review- Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

 

 Pic as found on internet

I found this author while googling about top rated writers around the world. Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally around the world, with his work translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside Japan.

I have read many novels and books of Murakami, and every time I discover his writings as fresh, raw, and oddly sealed with magic. The sunken feelings of human beings are captured phenomenally in his compositions. His books present the world which seems to be untruly true.

Men Without Women is a compilation of 07 short stories. The stories penetrated through my eyes and have left deep impressions on my thoughts and heart. These small tales explore those crushing feelings of losing someone…due to death, mistake, misunderstandings, or many other reasons. It depicts the bravery of a person to lift his broken spirit and carry on forward with the soul which is imprinted with memories of lost ones.

Haruki Murakami uses his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their paths, find themselves secluded. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to the souls of readers. He has captured the brutal realities of human experience, at least, the occasion some people will ultimately sense in the face of repudiation. This certainly isn’t a collection about desperate men but about those souls who are in frantic search of hope, happiness, and love.

The book is a must-read for those who dare to challenge themselves in exploring various human emotions.

Some of the quotes from the book (which may not sound meaningful if read out of context, yet sharing to give a glimpse of depth-ness of thoughts) -

"So in the end maybe that’s the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves.”

“There were times he thought it would have been far better to never have known. Yet he continued to return to his core principle: that, in every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong.”

“When I should have felt real pain, I stifled it. I didn’t want to take it on, so I avoided facing up to it. Which is why my heart is so empty now.”

“can any of us ever perfectly understand another person? However much we may love them?”

“Some people are polite, and some are quick. Each one’s a good quality to have, but most of the time quickness trumps politeness.”