First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami

'I can divulge up front that his latest, First Person Singular, is not very good.

'(B)rilliant (.) Describing how these stories succeed is like trying to describe exactly why, more than 50 years later, a Beatles song still sounds fresh' - David Means, The New York Times Book Review.

He disregards women as interchangeable and unremarkable for anything other than their looks: of all the women in these eight stories, only one has a name.' - Hillary Kelly, The Los Angeles Times Murakami's treatment of women is abhorrent. (.) But sheer snooziness isn't the collection's worst offense. (.) The eight stories in First Person Singular share a deadening lack of curiosity. The only appeal left to make to the reader is the brand name on the cover. The women are rubbed down into featureless nubs, the men deflated caricatures - popped balloons. They're like copies of copies of copies of Murakami's older work all the specificity and vivacity is blurred out.

'The real question is: Does the reader care? Each story is like the greenery filler in a grocery store bouquet: stiff and charmless, background fodder, indistinct organic matter.Always searching, always humble and with a sense of wonder as he veers into the mildly bizarre, Murakami gets philosophical without sounding pretentious.' - Nicolas Gattig, The Japan Times '(H)is new offering stands out from the crowd, sticking to his tried-and-true formula and retaining a disarming earnestness as he takes everyday moments and goes deeper.The conversational style can be slack and cliched, speckled with reflections on philosophical questions about ageing, identity, memory and what it is to know oneself.' - David Hayden, The Guardian 'The playfulness with the identity of the narrator might be more rewarding, were it not for the stretches of tepid, underpowered writing.(.) Kaum einer spürt den Nichtigkeiten, in denen alles folgende angelegt sein kann, so meisterlich nach wie Haruki Murakami.' - Ursula Scheer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (.) Was vordergründig daherkommt wie neun Erzählungen von eleganter sprachlicher Schlichtheit, die lose an das vertraute Konzept der Novelle um eine unerhörte Begebenheit anknüpfen, spürt ein ums andere Mal der bloßen Ahnung von Bedeutsamkeit nach. '(T)atsächlich ist schwer zu sagen, wovon die Erzählungen in seinem jüngsten Band handeln.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the authorī+ : nicely low-key and cohesive story-collection

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First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami