Shibuya No Love – Hannu Rajaniemi

I was clicking around the always excellent Guardian Books page, source of many a mid-work literature fix, when I came across this interview with Hannu Rajaniemi.  He seemed endearingly down to earth, is a fellow Murakami fan and his novel, The Quantum Thief, sounded like an interesting concept, so I followed the link to the first piece he had published, Shibuya No Love. 

I enjoyed the story, but it’s clearly the work of an inexperienced, though talented, writer.  It can be instructive to read the work of less polished authors, though, because the visible seams make it easier to understand what works, and what doesn’t.

The Trial – Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka is regarded as one of the best and most influential authors of the 20th Century, and is a major figure in existentialism and magic realism.  Like all of his novels, The Trial was left unfinished, but to me, it still read like a complete story.  This might be because Kafka blends the surreal and mundane, and you need to relax your logic to be carried along with it.  Or it might just be because, by the time I was three quarters of the way through the book, I was sick of it.

After Dark – Haruki Murakami

Considering some of Murakami’s stories involve dancing dwarves, talking cats and sheep with plans for world domination, you’d expect a novel in which he explores Tokyo’s dark side to be pretty damn strange.  But surprisingly, After Dark is one of his less weird novels.  Sure, a girl gets trapped inside a TV set for a bit, but that’s as mundane as a walk to the shops for this author.

Most of the action in After Dark takes place in an unnamed entertainment district, one of those places like Shibuya that lend themselves to stereotypical images of modern Japan, full of giant television screens, neon signs and pay-by-the-hour “love hotels”.  Murakami perfectly captures the nightlife and atmosphere of Tokyo: the salary men rushing for the last train; the constant traffic of kids heading between convenience stores and karaoke bars; the scavenging rats, cats and crows. 

A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami

A sheep with a star shaped mark on its back and possibly nefarious designs for the human race.  A girl with supernaturally dazzling ears and a sixth sense.  A dying right-wing power broker.  A narrator haunted by a whale’s penis.  A slurring dwarf in a sheep outfit.  What could they all have to do with each other?  Why, they’re all part of the plot of one of Haruki Murakami’s earliest novels, A Wild Sheep Chase.  Naturally.

The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita is a smart satire of Stalin’s Russia and a bold reinterpretation of Christian mythology, but what I loved most about it is its lush imaginativeness, its beautiful, dark images of an unhappy maidservant fleeing her former life on a flying pig, or Satan’s ball with its ape jazz band and crystal pool of wine, attended by histories greatest villains like Caligula, Messalina and, just for fun, polar bears.

Its plot can be summarised as: the devil pays a visit to Stalin’s Moscow.  It is written in the kind of tight, Russian prose that you find in Dostoevsky, but with a playfulness that sometimes has the author breaking the fourth wall, while the novel’s structure is, to put it bluntly, weird.

The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami

review by Gabriel

It’s Murakamipalooza!  By which I mean, I’ve read two Murakami short story collections in a row.  That probably doesn’t qualify for a palooza suffix, but I’m going with it anyway.  The Elephant Vanishes, like Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is a random collection of short stories, being neither chronologically nor thematically linked.  It is probably more consistent in quality than the latter, and contains everything you’d expect of the author – readability, weirdness, a sense of playfulness and gratuitous references to jazz, classical music and cats.  But it also contains a few stories that surprised me with their characterisation and perspective, and showed me that Murakami can be more flexible than I’d thought.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman – Haruki Murakami

Review by Gabriel

This collection includes the short story The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes, in which an unnamed narrator enters a contest to win a two million yen prize by inventing a new kind of confection.  To win, he must gain the approval of an unusual panel of judges – the Sharpie Crows, revered birds that live deep in the bowels of the company, and who feed only on genuine Sharpie Cakes.  When he presents his invention to the crows (*spoilers on*), they tear each other apart trying to decide if his product is the real deal.

 In the introduction to Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami states that The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes was his reaction to the Japanese literary establishment.  When the narrator of the story walks away from the prize due to the savagery and ridiculousness of the judges, he says, “From now on I would make and eat the food I wanted to eat.  The damned Sharpie Crows could peck each other to death for all I cared.”  This pretty much sums up Murakami’s attitude to writing, and it’s what makes his books so damn enjoyable.

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Review by Gabriel

I was reading Love in the Time of Cholera around the office a lot, and people would come up to my desk, peek at the title of the book, and say “Ew.  Love and cholera?  That doesn’t sound like a very good combination”.  According to my extensive research (on Wikipedia), the main symptom of cholera is “exhaustive diahorrea.”  Not the most romantic disease, then.  And yet, this is one of the most romantic books I’ve read, which presents not an idealised image of love, but one that gushes (oh yeah.  I’m going there) humanity and sensuality.  On to the review, and more poo jokes.

South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami

review by Gabriel

South of the Border, West of the Sun has the same basic plot as another of Murakami’s novels, Norwegian Wood – a protagonist whose life is in turmoil because he is unable to forget his first love.  Published only five years apart, the former is a revisitation of many of the latter’s themes – death, love, sex, fate.  But there are a number of significant differences that make for a very different, though equally enjoyable, reading experience.

Norwegian Wood – by Haruki Murakami

review by Gabriel

Norwegian Wood is a novel about youth, love, and death, and the pain that comes from all three.  It’s unusual amongst Murakami’s work in that it is firmly grounded in reality, absent of his signature style of magic realism.  Nonetheless, the author is still instantly recognisable due to his distinctive first person narration and addictive readability.

Set in Tokyo in the 1960s, the story focuses on Toru Watanabe, a university student haunted by the suicide of his best friend, Kizuki, and dealing with the angst and ennui of late adolescents.