- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (Aug 29 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1400044618
- ISBN-13: 978-1400044610
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.8 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 658 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #300,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by Lily Tuck One of my favorite Haruki Murakami stories is "The Elephant Vanishes"—part of an earlier collection published in 1991—in which the narrator watches as an elephant in a zoo grows smaller and smaller until finally the elephant disappears. No explanation is given, there is no resolution, the vanished elephant remains a mystery at the same time that the narrator's life is changed forever.Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami's new collection of 25 stories, many of which have appeared in the New Yorker and other publications, also describes these epiphanic instances. In the title story, a character who is half deaf, alludes to a John Ford movie, Fort Apache, in which John Wayne tells the newly arrived colonel that if he actually saw some Indians on his way to the fort that means there weren't any. Everything is a bit off—including of course the blind willow trees whose pollen carry flies that burrow inside a sleeping woman's ears—as in a dream, where explanations are always lacking but where interpretations are plentiful. In "Mirror," the narrator sees someone who appears to be both himself and not himself in a mirror and then finds out the mirror does not exist; the disaffected woman—a lot of Murakami's characters are handicapped or incapacitated in some physical way—in "The Shinagawa Monkey," loses her own name; in "Man-Eating Cats," the narrator's girlfriend disappears and as he searches for her finds that "with each step I took, I felt myself sinking deeper into a quicksand where my identity vanished." Murakami's stories are difficult to describe and one should, I think, resist attempts to overanalyze them. Their beauty lies in their ephemeral and incantatory qualities and in his uncanny ability to tap into a sort of collective unconscious. In addition, a part of Murakami's genius is that he uses images as plot points, going from image to image, like in the marvelous story "Airplane," where, while making love, the narrator imagines strings hanging from the ceiling and how each one might open up a different possibility—good and bad. It is clear that Murakami is well acquainted with the teachings of Buddhism, western philosophies, Jungian theory; he has a deep knowledge of music and, also, I have been told, is a dedicated, strong swimmer. In his stories, he roams freely and convincingly through all these elements (and no doubt many more) without differentiating to create a world where cats talk and elephants disappear. In the introduction to this collection, Murakami writes how, for him, writing a novel is a challenge and how writing short stories is a joy—these stories are a joy for his readers as well.Lily Tuck's most recent novel, The News from Paraguay, won the 2004 National Book Award.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
This well-honored and avidly read Japanese writer, who is the author, most recently, of the novel Kafka on the Shore (2005), extols the virtues of, as well as admits to a fondness for, the short story form ("a joy") in his introduction to this selection of 25 of his short works. Readers who fear the short story, particularly by writers with a high literary reputation, need to set hesitations aside here. Murakami is an open-armed, hospitable short story writer who avoids the obscurantism often caused by the concision that the form requires. His stories have an oral tone, a greatly appealing and embracing personal narrative voice. "Yep, that's life all right," says the narrator of "A Perfect Day for Kangaroos," on the subject of finding a suitable day--what with inclement weather and health issues--to visit the zoo. The sheer perfection of that story is counterpoised by "Tony Takitani," a longer and more elaborate but no less jolting story about a man's life, which begins and ends in loneliness. The title story is a low-key but poignant memoir-type narrative about a young man's caring for his hearing-impaired cousin, and the pleasure of "The Mirror" arises from the feel it gives of an Edith Wharton ghost story. The beauty of the author's prose style seals every story's sharp delivery. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Some great stories,
By Artlover "Artlover" (Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Paperback)
Truthfully, some of these stories are better than others. Like the work of many successful artists thsi book might have benefited by a strong-minded editor. Stories like "the kidney Shaped stone that moves by itself," "A Shinegawa monkey" and "A'poor aunt' Story" were deeply moving and had all the hallmarks of Murakami's best work. Other's like "Man-Eating Cats" and "Iceman" were pretty forgetable.I give it four stars because the majority of stories are excellent. I would have given a full five if four or five of them had been cut.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Kind of Breeze that Resonates,
This review is from: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Paperback)
"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" is a career spanning collection that includes two of the first short stories Murakami wrote twenty-five years ago, through to stories published last year. In this collection we get both the surreal, with stories of talking monkeys and of icemen who date Japanese women, and the very real, with stories about everyday people dealing with cancer, sexuality and the loss of their children.At their best these stories - nine of them having been published in the "New Yorker" - like Murakami's strongest novels they sink deep within the reader's psyche. His stories have the power to make you dream differently. How Murakami does this may seem beguiling. The secret, I believe, is in the balancing. Murakami grounds the surreal stories in the mundane while managing to bask the realistic stories in an other-worldly glow. In 'The Iceman' the main character meets the iceman, her future lover, in the lobby of a ski resort. There the iceman is, just reading a book. Ho-hum. Nothing to see here. While in the short story 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,' on the other hand, Murakami turns a simple bus ride through the woods into a moment out of a dream. The story begins, "When I closed my eyes the scent of the wind wafted up towards me." The narrator compares the May wind coming through the bus window to the breaking open of a fruit. "The flesh split open in mid-air, spraying seeds like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms, leaving behind a faint trace of pain." To slip into Murakami's world, to get into his stories, never feels like work and the trick, again, is in the balance. In an era of not knowing how to slow down, Murakami's stories never feel rushed. There is always a slow easiness to them no matter how heavy the topic, death and loss being common themes. And though the stories never feel overly dark or depressing, rarely do we get serenity without a sense of its exact opposite. In 'Man Eating Cats,' a Japanese couple lives the perfect life on a Greek island. Each day is spent eating the simplest foods, drinking wine and making love. What the narrator describes as "the most peaceful time" in his whole life doesn't last. The narrator's girlfriend goes missing, the story ends and we're left with no indication where she went or that she will ever be found. Like most Murakami fiction the "point" of these stories is not always clear. Readers looking for straight narratives with lesson-drawing endings may feel frustrated, like they don't "get it". The stories are more for those who can relate when a character in 'A Poor Aunt Story' says, "For some reason, things that grabbed me were things I didn't understand." Although some of Murakami's earlier stories aren't quite as successful as the nine stories published in "The New Yorker" what is clear is that most of the twenty-five stories in this collection linger in the mind like lucid dreams, carrying you along like a gentle breeze while containing enough weight to resonate. -Bookworm, Movie Nerd [...]
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (52 customer reviews) 55 of 58 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome back to Murakami World,
By Charles E. Stevens - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Hardcover)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (BWSW) is an amazing collection of short stories. Spanning 25 years of Murakami's career (the oldest story was originally written in 1980, while several were penned in 2005), the stories in BWSW show off Murakami's amazing skill and versatility. Murakami's stories are often described as defying typical genre classifications, and while this is true, it would be a mistake to interpret this as meaning that all Murakami stories are the same. The stories in BWSW will alternately leave you scared, laughing, amazed, and confounded. Although everyone will have their favorite stories, my personal favorites were Firefly (later expanded into Norwegian Wood), Hanalei Bay, Tony Takitani, and The Mirror. I felt the first three best represented Murakami's patented ability to tap into the tightly-linked joy, loss, and loneliness of the human condition, while the fourth was enjoyable as the pure "ghost story" ... while this genre is a staple in Japanese literature, it is a departure from the rest of Murakami's works.If you are new to Murakami, I think that his short story collections (either BWSW or The Elephant Vanishes) are the best place to start. Murakami's works are best "felt" rather than "analyzed" and short stories are the best way to get acquainted with his talent and style. If you like his short stories, try a novel. Which one is a matter of personal taste ... interestingly, while Wind-Up Bird is typically his most popular work in the West, it is his earlier works (notably Norwegian Wood, Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and Dance, Dance, Dance) that remain even more popular in his native Japan to this day. If you are an old Murakami hand, you might be wondering what is next. Unfortunately the future is a little murky. Murakami seems to be in the process of re-inventing himself, and the first product of the "new" Murakami is After Dark (due to be released in English in 2007), which received mixed reviews in Japan. Personally, I look forward to whatever work follows After Dark, to see which Murakami we can expect in the future. As for me, I think I'll go back and re-read his earlier works to immerse myself once again in the always amazing, always indescribable, and always unforgettable universe that is Murakami World. 30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Murakami's Minute Masterpieces of Mystery and Imagination,
By Crazy Fox - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Paperback)
Murakami Haruki has been sorely misrepresented in English. Equally adroit at the novel and the short story, this prolific writer's novels seem to get all the attention in translation--okay, most of it, anyway. As a book, then, "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" goes a long way towards righting that imbalance, filled as it is with twenty-four fine short stories expertly rendered into English by two of Murakami's long-time translators, Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin. Unlike the novels with their gradually convoluted spirals into the twilight zone, the short stories herein are more like short day trips there and back again. For all that, though, they are quintessentially Murakami: understated tales of love, longing, and loss from the slightly eccentric to the downright surreal--and yet so surreal as to ring true, convincingly grasping life's little mysteries and synchronicities in a deadpan, matter-of-fact manner. Genres blend and identities blur, reality and illusion overlap and interplay, all amidst the familiar psychological furniture of our contemporary consumerist planet with its internationally hodgepodge culture. The occasional dash of postmodern irony only accentuates these unsettling explorations of the human condition, and yet for all that each tale is enjoyable and highly entertaining to read. Almost deceptively so.The stories exhibit quite a range, too. Some are very early works of Murakami's when his style was still in its formative stages, others are quite recent and show the sure hand of an experienced craftsman. Some are clearly allegorical while some are more confusing than anything. Some are unlike anything else I've read by him, others are familiar--including stories that were clearly the seeds that later grew into full-blown novels, like "Firefly" ("Norwegian Wood") and "Man-Eating Cats" (Sputnik Sweetheart"). Some are just this side of odd while others are utterly bizarre. And everything in between. As such, this book makes for a great introduction for any newcomers to Murakami's fictional world, but for those who've been there many a time before it offers yet another excellent JAL flight south of the border, west of the sun--only this one made up of many hops, skips, and jumps. The short stories included are: 1. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman 2. Birthday Girl 3. New York Mining Disaster 4. Airplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself As If Reciting Poetry 5. The Mirror 6. A Folklore for My Generation: A Pre-History of Late-Stage Capitalism 7. Hunting Knife 8. A Perfect Day for Kangaroos 9. Dabchick 10. Man-Eating Cats 11. A "Poor Aunt" Story 12. Nausea 1979 13. The Seventh Man 14. The Year of Spaghetti 15. Tony Takitani 16. The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes 17. The Ice Man 18. Crabs 19. Firefly 20. Chance Traveler 21. Hanalei Bay 22. Where I'm Likely to Find It 23. The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day 24. A Shinagawa Monkey 11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Superb Short Story Collection from Haruki Murakami,
By John Kwok - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Paperback)
"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" demonstrates Haruki Murakami's mastery of the short story genre. It is quite simply one of the most intriguing short story collections that I have read recently. Much to his credit, Murakami has a marvelous ability of transforming the mundane into something that's quite interesting, and often profound, as demonstrated by so many of his short stories published in this volume, which deal with relationships between men and women. Though set primarily in his native Japan, his stories - which are well-translated by his long-time translators Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin - have an almost universal quality to them, as fascinating examinations of contemporary modern culture from the perspectives of both men and women. All of these stories feature Murakami's usual literary tricks of the trade, ranging from his mordant humor to constant references to contemporary pop culture, and last, but not least, his keen ear for dialogue between the sexes. These stories truly demonstrate why Murakami isn't just one of Japan's greatest living writers, but more importantly, why he ranks amongst the world's finest.It's hard to pick among twenty-four terrific tales for personal favorites. Two of the best, "Firefly" and "Man-Eating Cats", were revised later to become separate chapters in Murakami's novels "Norwegian Wood" and "Sputnik Sweetheart". Another compelling story is his realistic fantasy "The Ice Man", which could have been written by Harlan Ellison. "Dabchick" is an intriguing, almost Kafkaesque, battle of wits between a young woman and a receptionist in the office of a mysterious Japanese tycoon. "Hanalei Bay" is an emotionally riveting tale about a woman's ability to cope with the loss of her only child, a son killed by a shark while surfing in Hawaii. These superb stories are among the reasons why that I - ten years after being introduced to Murakami's work by fellow Stuyvesantian Muriel Cleary - regard him as among my favorite contemporary authors. If you haven't read any of Murakami's work, then do yourself a favor and pick up this fine short story collection; it will be a most delightful introduction to it. |
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