Birthday Girl (2002)

i'd been wanting to read Murakami for a long while, and i always felt oddly intimidated and lost -i didn't know where the hell to start. but this year i got back into reading and i got a little taste of japanese literature, and boy i am hooked. so i marched over to my local bookstore and asked my trusted shopkeeper to show me everything they have by this man, and i was presented with a meager pile of three books: a thicc boi about a murder, a non fiction work about music, and this beautiful, illustrated guy. maybe i wouldnt have chosen such a short story for a first taste (i would have honestly gravitated towards norwegian wood or kafka on the shore, had they been available), but i fugured its such a pretty edition i wouldnt mind having it in my bookshelf even if i didnt love the story. and actually? it served the purpose i wanted it to.

my goal was to dip my toe into the murakamiverse, if you will. i wanted to see the style, the prose, how accessible it was, you know the drill. and i liked it! i was a little put off by the time i finished, due to how open it was. i felt like i wasnt GETTING it. but the more i thought about it, the more i appreciated it. (maybe this was influenced by the fact that i really really wanted to like it, but regardless). i like that it poses a question, and in fact, i think i liked the little semi-autobiographical text at the end even more than i liked the story, which is a good thing: i like murakami's writing, after all, which means ill probably be reading him again, i hope sooner than later.

also: the illustrations are plentiful and STUNNING. my compliments to the chef -kat menschik deserves so much credit. absolutely beautiful pieces. ( )

A short read, but an excellent one indeed. The story will leave you with questions, and each reader can have his/her own interpretation. It really kept me wondering even after I was done with the reading, this book will remain in my heart for a very long time! Must-read, will touch your soul. ( )

This is a short story about a waitress who has to serve dinner to the reclusive owner of the restaurant where she works and was written to celebrate Murakami’s 70th birthday.

At just over 40 pages it can read in the time taken to eat a slice of birthday cake. It’s a strange little tale, abstract as the names of the characters aren’t revealed and with a hint of magic to it.

It has the hint of a modern fairy tale to it, the story ending with a vaugeness that allows the reader to interpret it in their own way.

The difficulty with reviewing such a short story is that there is the potential to simple re-tell the tale and thereby spoil the book for any potential audience.

There is a craft to short story writing, setting the scene, creating character connections and telling the narrative arc in a limited number of words. Here the characters could be imagined, the scene too. As said above, there was some distance to those characters, given they are not named and the limited information about them doesn’t really allow the reader to get a true sense of them. That said it may not be necessary that they do, given this is a short story.

An enjoyable enough tale, one to pass 10 minutes or so with. ( )