Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

"Sometimes I feel like I'm half transparent. As if you could see right through to my internal organs, like a freshly caught squid"

I wouldn't say I planned by diary last week completely around the release of Men Without Women but I admit I came pretty close. The publication of a new book by Haruki Murakami in my eyes deserves a day off work and a plan; where to buy a copy and where to immediately retreat to dive into the first page. My only regret was that I wasn't somewhere in Tokyo, specifically in Minami-Aoyama, on a 'narrow street behind the Nezu Museum'. I settled instead for Piccadilly Waterstones.

You see for me reading a new Murakami novel is like meeting up with an old friend, perhaps that friend that you don't meet often enough but the one that you look up to more than others. Murakami is the friend who knows you implicitly but doesn't judge and that's why you keep going back for more. I was recently in Japan on a business trip and couldn't wait to reveal my love of Murakami to my host a charming but stiff corporate CEO, we'll call him Tanaka-san. Needless to say this was the ice breaker I needed. No sooner had I mentioned 1Q84 to Tanaka-san in a bar in Shinagawa and a large whiskey sour arrived in front of me.

Men Without Women is a collection of seven short stories on the subject of men and specifically men isolated through separation from the women they love. Many of these stories have been previously published in The New Yorker but are curated together here thematically linked by their protagonists pain.

There are plenty of classic Murakami tropes on offer here for aficionados; Beatles songs and jazz records, smokey Tokyo bars and ramen shops,  loners and alley cats, but the stories are equally accessible for new readers. In fact, Men Without Women could be the perfect introduction to the world of Murakami. The stories become increasingly whimsical which means you're taken gently by the hand through the rabbit hole.

There a couple of stand out stories for me. In Drive my Car an ageing actor, Kafuku, hires a chauffeur, to drive him, in a yellow Saab 900 convertible, to performances after he is diagnosed with sight problems. Watari, his new female driver increasingly asks more questions and ultimately uncovers Kafuku's double blind spot.

In Yesterday we meet student Kitaru who fails both his university entrance exams and fails to live up to his perceived expectations of, Erika, the girl he loves. Instead he sets Erika up with his best friend, the narrator. But it is in the story Men Without Women itself where Haruki Murakami confirms this collection of shorts as a new contemporary classic; "Because you already know what it means to be Men Without Women. You are a pastel coloured Persian carpet, and loneliness is a Bordeaux wine stain that won't come out".

Men Without Women is a sublime collection of short stories about love, loss and the places in between told through the lens of an at once idiosyncratic yet recognisable writer.

I read this novel mostly at home in Oxfordshire.

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami published by Vintage, 240 pages.     

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