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Loading... Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Vintage International) (original 2013; edition 2007)by Haruki Murakami
Work InformationBlind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami (2013)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Murakami is a master of strangely odd short stories. At times it's difficult to make sense of the plots.. ( ) I just don't think short stories are really suited to Murakami's vision of literature. There is too much suspension of belief required of the reader in too short a space of words, and the emotionless characters who are disarming after fifty pages are just flat when only given twenty. I'd be interested in what real Murakami devotees think of this. I loved the first book of his I read (Dance, Dance, Dance), liked the second (A Wild Sheep Chase) and enjoyed the third (Norwegian Wood). After that, though, the trick got a bit old and I didn't especially enjoy The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and found Kafka on the Shore to be like someone writing a parody of a Murakami story. No sé, creo que soy más del Murakami de las historias largas, a mi gusto sus universos toman mejor forma. De cualquier forma, ha sido harto interesante encontrar en estos cuentos algunos guiños de las novelas. Y aunque no sé si me han encantado la compilación completa, sí me quedo con varias historias que me han cautivado, como "La tía pobre" y "Somorgujo." "Twenty-four short stories are like two dozen cupcakes," I told my friend. He lit another Hope cigarette, but stopped short of inhaling. "I almost ate two dozen cupcakes one day," he said. "Um," I acknowledged. "A vendor delivered them at work, and though I offered them to the whole office, I was the only one eating them. I really don't know why I kept at it. The decorations were very cute, but each one was as bland as the one before. I thought I must have been missing something." We both looked out the window. "They were just cupcakes," I said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette.
Just as fiction that is purely mundane can be, well, mundane, fiction that is only fantastic is often only dull. Authors such as Paul Auster and Jonathan Carroll are successful precisely because they don't write in one mode or the other, but rather in both, and at the same time. By placing the mundane next to the fantastic these authors are able to show us the beauty of such everyday affairs as coffee or conversation; by placing the fantastic next to the mundane they provide the contrast necessary for readers to discern what makes their fancy other than facile. No one does this better than Haruki Murakami . . . . Great job author, I really like your writing style. I suggest you join N0velStar’s writing competition, you might be their next big star. Belongs to SeriesBlind Willow, Sleeping Woman (complete) AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
-- Kafka on the Shore Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami's characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all. No library descriptions found. |
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