Men Without Women - Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami, © Goodreads

First published in Japan in 2014, Men Without Women was translated into English in 2017. Haruki Murakami delivers a supremely enjoyable and enriching novel; a philosophical

collection of short-stories. These short stories are filled with curiosity driven by strong narrative, engulfing the reader within the author’s subtle use of text. The collection’s central concern is loneliness, aptly demonstrated by Murakami in one singular line within his final story, Kino, ‘when she died I lost my fourteen-year-old self. Like a baseball player’s number that is permanently retired, the fourteen-year-old inside me up and left for good’.

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT

In the first story, Drive My Car, the narrative follows a veteran actor and widower, Kafuka. After an incident involving alcohol meant Kafuka was banned from driving, his theatre company hires a chauffeur to drive his Saab 900 convertible for him. The driver, Misaki, was ‘five foot and powerfully built’, and ‘no matter how you looked at her, she was hardly a beauty’. Kafuka uses his time spent in the car to run through his lines and catch up on sleep. Initially the driving companions pass their car long journeys with silence, Misaki asking nothing of Kafuka and Kafuka asking nothing in return, “The absence of conversation didn’t bother Kafuka. He wasn’t good at small talk”. Yet, after some time Misaki becomes curious, and wants to know more about her passenger’s life. Kafuka explains that he had manufactured a friendship with one of his late wife’s lovers. Before her premature death, his wife never discussed her infidelities with him. Murakami shows how the widower’s curiosity becomes at once a torment; he brilliantly displays Kafuka’s simultaneous pride, vulnerability and the futility of this attempt to rebalance his life. The story offers a sad and yet amusing tale of loneliness which is both arresting and comforting. Drive My Car is an honest discussion of the complexities of life and relationships in a metropolitan world.

Yesterday, titled after the song by The Beatles, is told by a 20-year old man about his best friend, Kitaru. Kitaru and his girlfriend had been together since infancy, and yet had never had sex or barely shared a kissed. The girlfriend, Erika, has the same evocative dream over again, about a full moon that she views through the porthole of a ship, a moon made of pure transparent ice. Erika is a pretty college student, and her aching loneliness comes as a shock to the reader. Shortly after her dream, Kitaru disappears. The narrator falls in love with Erika, but he does not date her, and time passes. Sixteen years later, they run into each other at an expensive black-tie event in a hotel. On his drive home, the narrator listens to “Yesterday” and reminisces; ‘no one besides me. I watched that moon alone, unable to share its cold beauty with anyone’. Again, Murakami plays on the theme of loneliness; demonstrating its significance throughout his narrative.

All the stories in Men Without Women are unremittingly sad, permeating with a sense of loss and missed opportunity. The title that echoes Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 collection combines surrealism with loneliness with the aim to unsettle; an aim that is achieved through the text’s disconcerting and provocative narrative.

Murakami's latest book, Killing Commendatore, will be published on the 9th October (Harvill Secker).

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