This book is one of deft works of Haruki Murakami revealing the manifestation of male sentiments. It’s a pitch-perfect collection of seven short stories about men who became wise and old without women. The male characters seek for elucidation behind strange incidents and the mysterious ways of life, whereas the elusive women hold the secret to their partner’s fate. Their experiences teach them about acceptance, acquiescence and sometimes self-renunciation. Men in these stories are proscribed, abandoned and lonesome.
The stories are incessantly sad, a cold chill pervades the collection. The reader involuntarily emulates the alienation theme of this book – “when you lose your partner, you lose everything”. However, the intense curiosity of the characters that drives the narration, adeptly infuses into ours making it a compulsive read and a truly contemplating book.
The first story of the collection, “Drive My Car,” the narrator, hires an unattractive and taciturn woman as chauffeur as he has been in more than one drunk-driving minor accidents. The narrator is an actor by profession and has a reticent demeanor. His wife has recently died. He makes friends with his wife’s lover to determine the reason for which she had been cheating on him. The narrator who very much appreciates his friend’s company, eventually tries to confront his friend’s guilt by alluding him into tactful conversations and ends their friendship abruptly, without even leaving a note of concern.
In “Yesterday”, the narrator feels he is unworthy to be the boyfriend of his childhood sweetheart and alienates her. In an attempt to achieve intimacy in his relation, he urges his girlfriend for new acquaintances. This is where the story gets dark, commingled with nostalgia and regret.
Meanwhile, the narrator of “An Independent Organ”, is an unmarried cosmetic plastic surgeon who is habituated to having frequent affairs. He is a man who overlooks physical imperfections in his lovers. One fine day he deeply falls in love with one of his lovers. But their tryst gradually transitions into a catastrophe. He is obsessed with finding the answer to a question: “Who in the world am i?”
Well, not all stories fall under “men without women” category. In Scheherazade, the narrator is a young man who is incarcerated in a remote safe house. He has been assigned a support liaison who is also a housewife. On each visit she delivers groceries and books, have an insentient physical relationship that is almost impassive after which there is always an enthralling storytelling session. Each of those stories is enchanting, captivating both narrator and reader’s curiosity. Her ingenious storytelling skills seemed to be God gifted which made the narrator occasionally ponder – what if one day she went and never came back. Murakami ensures that the reader is hooked on the book making it unresistingly unputdownable.
The author seems to have delved into the unfathomable depths of life in search of force that binds us together – love. The pursuit of truth is the quintessential either-or scenario, whereas procrastination and posturing are puzzling circumstances that only tend to contribute to the garbled chaos in their lives. Each story pushes the reader towards the edge of assuaged grief, that can give sleepless nights and existential thoughts. The author’s rhetoric sleight reveals a significant journey into the male heart.
A concluding Murakami schmaltzy coda: “Being alive is a killer, if you think about it.”
The Meandering Path of Life 