First Person Singular

Een paar mooie en een paar minder bijzondere verhalen. Het centrale thema van de betere verhalen is misschien het geheugen. En zoiets als melancholie? Waarom herinneren we ons iets? Waarom verdwijnen dingen uit onze herinnering? Is het erg als we iets vergeten? Ik vrees dat ik de verhalen niet lang zal onthouden.

Not his best work. Not even one of his mediocre works. I thought this was a pretty lame attempt at trying to be Murakami, from Murakami himself. I thought the first short story ("Cream") was fine and almost what I was looking for out of Murakami short stories, but it was mostly downhill and rock bottom from there (looking at you, "Caravel". One can only read about Murakami's thoughts on ugly women for so long).

The only exception was "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey", which I thought was fun and conjured up some amazing mental images. A talking monkey scrubbing someone's back and making smalltalk? Sure, I'm here for that.

I'd pass on this one though, even if you're a Murakami fan. Maybe for completion's sake once you've read just about everything else by him. It's a quick read, if nothing else.

It's not terrible but it's not great. There are three other collections of his I'd recommend before this one. However, the first story, "Cream", does seem like a great way to introduce people to his writing. If you can handle that story you an handle pretty much anything he's thrown at us over the years and if you can't you probably shouldn't bother reading him.

Latest from Haruki Murakami. Read it on Kindle. I usually enjoy his short stories and this one was no exception. I liked the last two stories "Shinagawa Zaru(Shinagawa Monkey)" and "Ichininshou Tansu (First person singular).