Murakami is a writer who can suck me into a story like no other, his unparalleled imagination and the way he is able to weave banal everyday actions and straightforward and almost dull characters into tales involving the totally surreal can prove to be something approaching hypnotic. The books I’ve enjoyed the most have been his longest stories: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84. But much as l love his bigger pieces, his short fiction can sometimes pass me by. I’ve read quite a number of his short stories and probably only about half of them have grabbed me.

This collection is a case in point, they range from the wildly imaginative to the plain tedious and though a number of them really pricked my interest a similar number missed the mark. There are a few here I’d come across before and some of these were amongst my favourites. For me the highlights included a tale about a barn burning man and another concerning a student who cut lawns to earn some cash. However, in both of these, as is Murakami’s way, he disguises the message of the story to the point that it simply boiled down to the fact that I found the characters and the narrative sufficiently engaging that I was able to ignore the total lack of resolution. I think it was the atmosphere and the rhythm of both that captured me. A less conventional piece involved a dwarf who was determined to take over the body of a man who had desires for a work colleague – strange, yes, but engagingly so.

I think with this writer you’ve got to be prepared for things that you don’t always understand and to take what you can from what’s presented. If some stories seem instantly forgettable then the next one might stay with you for years – as has happened with one of the stories I experienced here for the second time: it involved young man and a young woman who meet very briefly and yet both instantly decide that the other is one hundred percent their perfect partner. Yet they agreed that if it was truly the case that they are destined to be together forever then they must also be destined to meet again, so they part agreeing that when they next met they’ll be partners for life. I won’t disclose what happens from this point but for me it did kick off a process of working through a mental list of people I’ve met in the past – opportunities taken and those missed too – I guess we’ve all done a bit of that.

For seasoned readers of this author this collection will probably be pretty much what you’d expect from him. But if you’re new to Murakami then I’d implore you to take the big leap and go for one of the three books I’ve listed above. It’ll be an adventure, I can assure you of that.

Desde hace tiempo escuchaba lo bueno que era Murakami relatando, por lo que terminé cediendo y elegí uno de sus libros de cuentos como primer acercamiento. ¿Es tan bueno como dicen? La verdad que no, pero tampoco está nada mal.

Acá tenemos diecisiete cuentos dispares que relatan desde cosas cotidianas a otras más fantásticas, entre las qué destaco "Quemar graneros", de un pirómano que disfruta quemar graneros y admirar la quema desde la distancia. "Sueños", de una mujer que descubre que ya no necesita dormir. La divertida "Nuevo ataque a la panadería", de unos recién casados que asaltan una panaderia por hamburguesas debido a una superstición. O la misma a la que se le debe el título del libro "El elefante desaparece", donde un hombre se obsesiona con la inexplicable desaparición de un elefante y su cuidador.

Si tuviera que situar en algún género los cuentos de Murakami, tal vez una mayoría entraría en el realismo mágico, aunque otros no sabría definirlos bien. Como ejemplo, el primero de ellos nunca lo terminé de entender, un hombre busca un gato y termina hablando con una vecina en su patio trasero. No hay nudo, o conflicto, o resolución. Ni siquiera podría pasar como anécdota, pareciera el retrato de un día extraño en la vida de un personaje trivial. O el mismo "Quemar graneros" ya antes mencionado, pese a lo bien contado que está, y lo ambiguo de su final, pareciera carecer de una verdadera resolución, dejándote con cierta sensación extraña de haber quedado a medio camino.

Aunque, pese a lo anterior mencionado, destaco que no hay ningún mal relato, todos logran entretener o hacerte pasar el rato en mayor o menor medida.

En fin, un buen libro de cuentos, pero no más que eso. Pese a que hubo varios de ellos que me gustaron bastante, me quedó esa sensación de que Murakami está algo sobrevalorado. A lo mejor a la próxima debería probar con una de sus novelas... tal vez. Aunque de momento lo dejo en veremos.

¡Entretenido!

مر ما يقرب من شهر الأن و أنا أهرب من غابة لأخرى. أقتات على التوت و الحشرات و أشرب المياه من النهر لأبقى حيا.

يأتي القزم إلى أحلامي كل ليلة و يطلب مني السماح له باحتلال جسدي

أصبح الشاب الذي لم نعرف اسمه أبدا رهين الإختيار ما بين أن تمسكه الشرطة و تقطعه أربا أو أن يسمح للقزم الراقص باحتلال جسده فيظل يرقص في الغابة إلى الأبد.

هكذا نحن أيضا و ان لم نملك رفاهية الاختيار. فنحن نسمح لكل الكائنات و حتى المشاعر باحتلال أجسادنا و مع ذلك نظل في النهاية نرقص في الغابة إلى الأبد هاربين من كلاب الشرطة التي ستمزقنا إربا إن توقفنا عن الركض المصحوب بالرقص.

غرائبية أخرى من غرائبيات موراكامي المعبرة عن الواقع النافية له في الوقت نفسه

مش قادر اصنف اللي قراته واقعي سحري ؟
فانتازيا؟
رعب؟
مشهد الفتاة كان مريع بحق الوصف مقزز بلا حدود
انا وضعت القصة دي في قائمة ما اريد ان اقراه من كام يوم
مكنش في الحسبان خالص اني هقراها قريب بس حصل و انا برشحها لاحدهم فتحتها و قراتها
حتي الان لم اقرا لهاروكي سوي بعض القصص القصيرة
و دائمًا ما يبهرني هذا الكاتب ان الابداع الحقيقي هو ان تكتب قصة قصيرة جدًا و تجعل القارئ يندمج في عالمها و مع شخوصها بهذا الشكل
12 صفحة
5792 كلمة
و لكنهم اجمل من الكثير من الروايات التي تتخطي حاجز ال 45 الف كلمة
و ساظل دائمًا اراقب ما يقراه اصدقائي و اتمني قراءة كل ما كتبه هاروكي فلقد آمنت به من بعض القصص البسيطة

Short stories that were included in my edition:
- "The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women" → 1 ☆
- "The Second Bakery Attack" → 2 ☆
- "Sleep" → 4 ☆
- "The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds" → 1 ☆
- "Barn Burning" → 3 ☆
- "A Slow Boat to China" → 3 ☆
- "The Elephant Vanishes" → 1 ☆

Now why this low rating for a Murakami book? (2.5 ☆ maximum)
Well... Because the only short story that I actually really enjoyed and that managed to grab my attention was "Sleep", while the other narrations did not manage to captivate me and left me "cold" or indifferent. The 3 ☆ ones were fun to read as a "one time experience", however, I would not consider rereading them, while I know exactly that I will be rereading "Sleep" at some point in my life!!
Overall, I must add that I really like Haruki Murakami's writing style and how "flowy" the sentences are. One emerges from the other and they're nicely interlinked. A weird thing to say buttt: If reading a river would be a thing, I could imagine it would read itself like a Murakami story/book.

Murakami tiene eso de agregarte cosas totalmente extrañas en cada una de sus historias (pero que ahí tienen perfecto sentido!!) y creo que los cuentos son el escenario perfecto para eso. Son cortos, no hay que explicar mucha cosa. El autor es un muy buen cuentista y ésta es una interesante colección.

Los que más me gustaron fueron:

The second bakery attack
On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning
Barn burning
TV people
The silence
The elephant vanishes


Recomiendo no leerla de corrido, sino abrirlo cada tanto y disfrutar uno de los cuentos, como una tacita de café.

One cloudy night in April, in a habitual relay of stalking the profiles of strangers on GR, I found The 100% Perfect Girl.

To be truthful, she wasn't especially beautiful in her profile picture. Nor did any particular part of her profile jump out at me. Her bookshelves were all over the place, and she didn't seem to be that active on GR any more. She hadn't written many reviews either. However, the moment I clicked on 'Compare Books', I knew. She is The 100% Perfect Girl for me. When I saw that our tastes are 100% similar for the 1000+ books we had both rated, my heart shook as if the earth rumbled beneath my feet, and my mouth went as dry as a desert.

It might be that you have certain types of girls you like. For example, girls who are into the classics, girls who write witty reviews, or girls who love Dostoyevsky, or for some obscure reason, girls whose average book rating is below 3.00. Of course, I too have certain preferences. I've even once printed out all of the 'Favourite Quotes' of a girl whose profile I fell head over heels for, and stuck them on my wall.

However, it's impossible for anyone to typify The 100% Perfect Girl. Unfortunately, there's no way that I can recall where she was from. Hell, I don't even remember her name. All I can remember is that her profile wasn't especially enticing. Things are strange sometimes.

'You know, I found The 100% Perfect Girl last night', I might say to someone.
'Oh?' he answers. 'Was she beautiful?'
'No, not especially.'
'But she was your type.'
'The thing is, I don't remember. I can't even remember what colour her hair was, or whether she was smiling in the picture.'
'Strange.'
'Yeah, it is.'
'So...' he drawls, sounding bored. 'What did you do, did you send her a message, or send her a friend request?'
'Nope, didn't do anything.' I said. 'All I did was stumble upon her profile.'

She was online in one part of the world, while I was online in an airport of another, using up my quota of free Internet on a computer in the terminal before boarding my flight. I like being one of the last passengers to board so I don't get stuck in a slow-moving queue.

I think, how nice would it be to exchange messages with her, even one? I'd want to find out what kind of person she is, and I'd certainly hope that she asks about my life. And more than anything else, I'd want to unravel, say, the hands of fate leading to us finding each other on this humble website on a cloudy night in April, 2015. There must be a warm secret lying beneath the covers there, like an old typewriter from bygone days.

We would exchange pleasantries like those, and then get to the more personal questions. The flow of messages accelerates each day, and eventually we add each other on Skype. If things go smoothly, we might even talk about meeting in person. Possibilities knock on the doors of my heart.

I've already clicked on 'send message'.
How should I begin the conversation?

'Hey, how's it going! I hope you don't mind me sending this message :)'
No, that would be too casual. It could be the start of a lifelong love.
'Excuse me for intruding, but I happened to notice you are fond of the very same authors as me.'
No, this sounds too awkward - better sound familiar than frigid.
Maybe I should just come out with the truth. 'Hello there. You are The 100% Perfect Girl for me.'

No, that won't do, how creepy do I want to sound? Even if she sees the 100% match, she might not be that keen on talking to me. Even if I'm The 100% Perfect Girl for you, you aren't The 100% Perfect Guy for me, I'm sorry, but - she might reply. That's entirely plausible. And if I were to have such a reply thrust upon me, I would be hopelessly confused. I might never get over the shock. I'm 23, and before I know it, I'll be fondly reflecting over my student years - such a retort is part and parcel of growing up and entering the real world.

Nonetheless, I type up a dignified, yet stylish message, and I'm looking over it for typos and mistakes. The repercussions of this implicit love letter flash before my mind's eye. We'll get married, live in a cosy house, and have a big room just for books. The cursor hovers over the 'send' button. This is it.

As my finger starts to descend on the mouse's left click, I hear my name boom out of the terminal speakers. 'Mr. Junta _____, your flight is waiting for you. Please board the flight at Gate 17 immediately. This is the last announcement.' I panic, and look over at the gate where the airline staff are looking around for me, frowning.

'Shit!', I say as I physically and mentally curse myself for losing track of time over the message. I have to just send this message off and run.

I look back at the screen. The one hour time limit is up, and I've been redirected to the homepage. I hear voices from the direction of the gate, 'There he is!', and quickly approaching footsteps.





Of course, now I know what I should have typed in my message to her, how I should have begun my acquaintance with her. But it's such a long message, maybe I wouldn't have made it inside the one hour anyway. Just like in this story, the things I come up with are always impractical.

Anyway, the message begins with 'Once upon a time', and ends with 'Don't you think that's a sad story?'



*********************************************************

To read the second half (and actual first half, where he meets her on the street) of the original story, On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning, get your hands on The Elephant Vanishes or another one of Murakami's short story collections which includes this piece.

I've always liked reading, but for some reason or other, I didn't read too many novels through my teenage years. A friend got me back into it in my second year of university, and Murakami was the first author I really got hooked on then, going through all of his novels in the following 12 months.

My first favourite was Kafka on the Shore. Then, A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance. I would read his novels and short stories in Japanese and English (sometimes both), and went onto his other works, including non-fiction.

A few years later, my love for reading is at its peak, and I look back fondly at the times when I was captivated by his novels. After some re-reads over the years, Kafka has been demoted to 4-star, while AWSC/DDD was also demoted for a while.

The Elephant Vanishes, although it is entirely different to his novels as a short story collection, I've felt quite safe in maintaining the 5 stars. I haven't read the English translation, and I'm sure the Japanese original cannot be beaten, but I recommend this short story collection to people new to Murakami. Not all of the included short stories (there are 17) are amazing, but many of them are great, pleasant reads. My favourites are

The kangaroo communique
The aforementioned story
A window
Barn burning, and
The elephant vanishes.

I occasionally pick this book off my shelf, and re-read one of the stories, not to look for anything new or necessarily follow the story, but more to enjoy the language and writing. As much as his novels can be thrilling, this anthology is where I come back to time and time again to enjoy Murakami's portrayal of everyday life, magical realism, dialogue modern Japanese in spirit, and the adventures, large and small, of the mediocre, apathetic and indifferent people any one of us could be.

May 1st, 2015

Expertly read by Levar Burton, per usual. Interesting, if kind of weird. The wife made some interesting leaps of logic. I'm wondering about her backstory. She was pretty interesting.

3.5 stars, rounded up, despite the weirdness. I did enjoy it.

"One impossible day, of an impossible month, of an impossible year."

"All I wanted was to get back to my book."

"In my own way, I'd like to believe I've got my own morals."

A collection from the writer which I found quite good with the kind of writing that would hook the reader until the last page. A good collection of honest writing, genuine characters, relatable stories and lines I feel I would never get tired of reading a book by the author.

*Contents:

1. The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women
3

Love him or hate him, Mr. Murakami won't leave you indifferent.
You don't know when he's serious, he has much more questions than answers, and yet he makes you curious. And that's perhaps the most important achievement for any writer...

As usual, Murakami hits your head in puzzlement in a story with an exotic context..
And in my mind it is a simple destination and that the elephant is only a metaphor for the things or emotions that occupy a large volume in our lives and then suddenly fade as if they were not! ♥

REVIEW (MARCH 2021): This is my third time reading this short story collection and I still love it a lot but since I had to reread it for a paper that I'm writing it wasn't the most fun reading experience ... took me a solid six days of reading and rereading every single story and writing down twelve pages of quotes and thoughts ... and the paper still isn't finished yet lmao. So, I still love it a lot but this time around it was also hella exhausting to read.

REVIEW (JANUARY 2020): This is my new favourite book of all time. There, I said it. This short story collection is such a mind fuck and I am so glad that we discussed this at university because it broadened my horizon so much and nothing is the same ... and life is beautiful and I am pretty overwhelmed. I read The Elephant Vanishes in 2016 and didn't think much of it ... it was a good short story collection but I didn't properly engage with it. I read it within the span of two days and that was it. Oh, my sweet summer child ... you were so oblivious back then.

I love reading (I think most of us on this website do). I've been reading my whole life but something has really shifted for me in these past five years when I started reading more and more thoroughly. Reading is not just reading. Reading needs to be learned. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying there is a right and a wrong way to read something, but as you grow as a reader, your ability to access a text and analyse it on different levels develops. Reading is a skill. Like a muscle, it needs to be trained.

The Elephant Vanishes is a brilliant short story collection by Murakam which makes us question reality and the interlocking of fiction/imagination and truth/reality. All of the stories are intertwined. Heck, I would even go as far as to say that they are all about the same person. Murakami hammers in the notion of "simultaneous existence" – the concept that two things can be true at the same time. This is what The Elephant Vanishes is about, in my humble opinion: the fact that in literature the lines between reality and fiction can blur; that two things can be true at the same time; that we are all getting older; that we are all hungry for life; we want to fill the void.

All of the stories can, of course, stand on their own, and they're all quite brilliant. You guys know that "The Bakery Attack" used to be my favorite short story for a long time ... but nowadays I don't think there's much sense in looking at each story individually ... of course, we can still learn a lot, but it gets more interesting when you see the bigger picture and all the reoccurring themes that run through this collection. It's a collection about loss and about looking for things that aren't there - whether it's a missing cat, a vanishing elephant or a woman that disappears - we only see what we want to see; maybe we have just forgotten that all of these things weren't there in the first place. Like a writer we are constructing our own reality.

"Life is a mystery," says the protagonist, and so is this short story collection. I am convinced that upon every reread I will find more gems, more passages that show that every story is interconnected. I adored this short story collection. I will come back to it for many years to come.