Murakami’s latest – Men without Women – a collection of short stories about men living in solitude, is unique for his writing style. As a writer of fabulously surreal imagination, Men without Women might seem deceptively simplistic. But simple, it is not. Instead of diving in to what can only be called the subconscious realm, and bringing to the surface some dazzling literary pearls, as he is usually inclined to do; in his latest book, Murakami plunges into the realm of the heart.
Each of the stories has a woman playing a pivotal role in the protagonist’s life, and explores what awakening to her, in a specific context, does to his heart and mind. So while one man starves himself to death on discovering that the love of his life was in fact, a cheat; another closes his heart even to himself, on discovering his wife’s adultery, leading to strange consequences, and yet another comes to a deeper understanding and ultimately peace, after tormenting his mind over his unresolved experience with his wife, over the course of the story. For other men, their experiences with women are about hope and purpose. But the deepest dive Murakami takes into exploring emotion, is in the story titled ‘Men without Women’, the one story without a timeline after an initial trigger, but only an exploration within.
Men without Women is not for every Murakami fan. I was particularly disappointed at the lack of magic realism, having grown my literary sensibilities over the past decade or so with his two big novels – Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84, which bring out Murakami’s creative flair in all its glory. But it does offer a different kind of experience. It has the ache of loss, the wonder of love and the comfort of predictability as key themes, each of which is experienced by the protagonists across the stories. It is a rare book from a master storyteller that explores the male mind’s reaction, often to romantic love, with careful detail, and even without the usual Murakami flourishes, it is well worth a read.
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