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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
by Haruki Murakami
This volume collects two dozen short works by the acclaimed Japanese author.
Knopf, 352 pages
08/29/2006
$24.95
ISBN: 1400044618
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
Short Stories
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Chicago Tribune Alan Cheuse
Many of these stories have a good chance of surviving, fusing as they do the great modern magical realist tradition with a compelling insouciance and an emotional spareness many readers will find they share. Tone is as important to Murakami as plot, or perhaps even more so. [27 Aug 2006]
Christian Science Monitor Heller McAlpin
What shines in all of them is Murakami's love for the open-ended mystery at the core of existence and his willingness to give himself up "to the flow" in order to capture some of the magic in the mundane.
Los Angeles Times Antoine Wilson
This collection shows Murakami at his dynamic, organic best. As a chronicler of contemporary alienation, a writer for the Radiohead age, he shows how taut and thin our routines have become, how ill-equipped we are to contend with the forces that threaten to disrupt us. [10 Sep 2006, p.R4]
New York Observer Mythili Rao
If Mr. Murakami's novels tend towards somber reflections on mortality and the tragedy of life's inherent uncontrollability, in his short stories, it's more often a bittersweet zest for life -- here, life at its most fantastic, unpredictable and otherworldly -- that triumphs. [16 Oct 2006]
The Guardian Tobias Hill
The lasting effect is not that of a Japanese writer trying to write about the west, but of a writer whose relationship with his own culture is as complex, strange and powerful as the stories he creates.
San Francisco Chronicle Jenna Krajeski
Inconclusive, bewildering and totally engaging, the whodunit survives in Murakami's work as a tired framework to be purged of its contents and refilled with ironic, metaphysical, quixotic mysteries: hard-boiled narratives for the postmodern set.
Kirkus Reviews
A superlative display of a great writer's wares. Absolutely essential. [1 June 2006, p.540]
Publishers Weekly Lily Tuck
Murakami's stories are difficult to describe and one should, I think, resist attempts to overanalyze them. Their beauty lies in their ephemeral and incantatory qualities and in his uncanny ability to tap into a sort of collective unconscious. [12 June 2006, p.27]
The Spectator D.J. Taylor
The effect is by turns exhilarating and, on the occasions when stylisation sets in, faintly dull. [15 July 2006]
Library Journal Andrea Kempf
The wonderful weirdness of his vision and his unique voice are difficult to describe. They must be experienced. [1 Apr 2006, p.88]
Daily Telegraph Christopher Tayler
Murakami is at his best telling shaggy-dog stories in which inexplicable events help the characters to understand truths that they've hidden from themselves, and in the five 'strange tales from Tokyo' he does just that.
Daily Telegraph Toby Lichtig
Murakami is not always at his most convincing in some of the more prototypical offerings (the later stories are more accomplished), but he is always provocative and never less than engaging.
The Independent Matt Thorne
It has to be said that including stories from the early Eighties to the present makes the book hit-and-miss, and it's a bit of a cheat to include "Firefly", which appeared in the novel Norwegian Wood.
The New Republic Chloë Schama
What redeems Murakami's writing from its puerility is its aestheticism: its haunting imagery, its credible voices, its allegorical play, its skill for surprise.
Booklist Brad Hooper
The beauty of the author's prose style seals every story's sharp delivery. [1 May 2006, p.6]
Salon Laura Miller
About half of the stories here have enough of Murakami's signature strengths to make them unmissable -- the rest will appeal mostly to completists.
The New York Times Book Review Terrence Rafferty
Over the years he has developed and sustained a remarkably distinctive narrative tone: calm, wry, intimate, gently interrogative.
The Observer David Jays
For all its peculiarity, Planet Murakami offers a recognisable landscape of our fears.
Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
The 25 stories juxtapose the deeply bizarre with the mundane to evoke fleeting moods of sadness, hope, nostalgia, and dread.
Bookslut Michael Antman
Precisely because of Murakami's stubborn refusal to resolve his stories, their experiences become the reader's: the losses, and the irresolvable loneliness they bring with them, cling to the reader long after the book has been closed. In Murakami's best work, we feel a kind of nostalgia for what others have lost, because it is our loss as well.
Boston Globe Thrity Umrigar
As psychologically rich as these stories are, Murakami's writing is a tad overwrought on occasion.
 The average user rating for this book is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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