Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Hardcover)

by Haruki Murakami (Author)
Key Phrases: kidney shaped stone, stocky boy, Tony Takitani, Shozaburo Takitani, Ice Man (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by Lily Tuck One of my favorite Haruki Murakami stories is "The Elephant Vanishes"—part of an earlier collection published in 1991—in which the narrator watches as an elephant in a zoo grows smaller and smaller until finally the elephant disappears. No explanation is given, there is no resolution, the vanished elephant remains a mystery at the same time that the narrator's life is changed forever.Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami's new collection of 25 stories, many of which have appeared in the New Yorker and other publications, also describes these epiphanic instances. In the title story, a character who is half deaf, alludes to a John Ford movie, Fort Apache, in which John Wayne tells the newly arrived colonel that if he actually saw some Indians on his way to the fort that means there weren't any. Everything is a bit off—including of course the blind willow trees whose pollen carry flies that burrow inside a sleeping woman's ears—as in a dream, where explanations are always lacking but where interpretations are plentiful. In "Mirror," the narrator sees someone who appears to be both himself and not himself in a mirror and then finds out the mirror does not exist; the disaffected woman—a lot of Murakami's characters are handicapped or incapacitated in some physical way—in "The Shinagawa Monkey," loses her own name; in "Man-Eating Cats," the narrator's girlfriend disappears and as he searches for her finds that "with each step I took, I felt myself sinking deeper into a quicksand where my identity vanished." 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. In addition, a part of Murakami's genius is that he uses images as plot points, going from image to image, like in the marvelous story "Airplane," where, while making love, the narrator imagines strings hanging from the ceiling and how each one might open up a different possibility—good and bad. It is clear that Murakami is well acquainted with the teachings of Buddhism, western philosophies, Jungian theory; he has a deep knowledge of music and, also, I have been told, is a dedicated, strong swimmer. In his stories, he roams freely and convincingly through all these elements (and no doubt many more) without differentiating to create a world where cats talk and elephants disappear. In the introduction to this collection, Murakami writes how, for him, writing a novel is a challenge and how writing short stories is a joy—these stories are a joy for his readers as well.Lily Tuck's most recent novel, The News from Paraguay, won the 2004 National Book Award.
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From Bookmarks Magazine
"Everything I write is a strange tale," Haruki Murakami says in his preface to this collection. Admittedly, his fusion of Eastern and Western elements of story and reality to create a uniquely surreal landscape of human and otherworldly experiences may be a little too strange for some readers. In addition, he asks more questions than he answers about his protagonists and their unusual situations. Yet those accustomed to his weird ways will find a lot to enjoy here, including many of his most popular New Yorker pieces. While it's clear that many of the stories are sketches made in preparation for the grand artistry of his novels, most, if not all, stand very well on their own.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (August 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400044618
• ISBN-13: 978-1400044610
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #355,462 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome back to Murakami World, August 29, 2006

By	Charles E. Stevens - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (BWSW) is an amazing collection of short stories. Spanning 25 years of Murakami's career (the oldest story was originally written in 1980, while several were penned in 2005), the stories in BWSW show off Murakami's amazing skill and versatility. Murakami's stories are often described as defying typical genre classifications, and while this is true, it would be a mistake to interpret this as meaning that all Murakami stories are the same. The stories in BWSW will alternately leave you scared, laughing, amazed, and confounded. Although everyone will have their favorite stories, my personal favorites were Firefly (later expanded into Norwegian Wood), Hanalei Bay, Tony Takitani, and The Mirror. I felt the first three best represented Murakami's patented ability to tap into the tightly-linked joy, loss, and loneliness of the human condition, while the fourth was enjoyable as the pure "ghost story" ... while this genre is a staple in Japanese literature, it is a departure from the rest of Murakami's works.

If you are new to Murakami, I think that his short story collections (either BWSW or The Elephant Vanishes) are the best place to start. Murakami's works are best "felt" rather than "analyzed" and short stories are the best way to get acquainted with his talent and style. If you like his short stories, try a novel. Which one is a matter of personal taste ... interestingly, while Wind-Up Bird is typically his most popular work in the West, it is his earlier works (notably Norwegian Wood, Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and Dance, Dance, Dance) that remain even more popular in his native Japan to this day.

If you are an old Murakami hand, you might be wondering what is next. Unfortunately the future is a little murky. Murakami seems to be in the process of re-inventing himself, and the first product of the "new" Murakami is After Dark (due to be released in English in 2007), which received mixed reviews in Japan. Personally, I look forward to whatever work follows After Dark, to see which Murakami we can expect in the future. As for me, I think I'll go back and re-read his earlier works to immerse myself once again in the always amazing, always indescribable, and always unforgettable universe that is Murakami World.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than "An Elephant Vanishes", March 8, 2007

By	Michael Lin (State College, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Although the stories in this collection are collected from Murakami's entire career, it feels much more coherent than his other major collection, "An Elephant Vanishes." The style of the stories is classic Murakami, those who don't like him or want something different aren't going to find any changes here. However, the format of a short story gives Murakami's writing a more immediate, accessible edge; not that his novels are hard to read. Murakami's use of classic Japanese endings is in full effect, with most of the stories having little or no conclusion. Instead, the reader is left to draw his own conclusions, and the emphasis is placed on the experience of the story rather than the story itself.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars bits of memories like gems wrapped in velvet, May 5, 2007

By	Daitokuji31 (Black Glass) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Being that Murakami Haruki's latest novel will be released to his English reading audience next week, I decided to get back into a Murakami mood by reading his most recent short story collection: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Years ago I read Murakami's first short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes, and some of the stories, such as T.V. People and The Dancing Dwarf left me quite cold, but others such as Slow Boat to China and Sleep revealed to me that Murakami is just as skilled penning short stories as he is penning novels. In fact, early in his career Murakami was more noted for his short story collections than his novels.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman consists of stories that Murakami wrote during the first twenty-five years as a writer and this book contains two of his oldest stories: New York, Mining Disaster and A "Poor Aunt" Story. His first short fiction was the previously mentioned A Slow Boat to China. The most recent stories, the last five in the book, were penned in 2005, so the reader is able to experience the shifts, the changes, and the evolutions of Murakami's stories through the years.

Being that the last four years of my life or so have been devoted to reading, researching, and writing on Murakami's literature, I might not be the most objective reader of this collection because of my familiarity with Murakami's writing style and themes. Many reviews mention how "strange" or "bewildering" the stories are, but to those of us who have read Murakami for a number of years, they come off as just pure Murakami and stories of green monsters, vampires, and man eating cats are perfectly normal next to those of romance in college.

Another thing that will be of interest to longtime Murakami readers is that included within this volume are the stories which would later evolve in longer works such as Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart. It is interesting to see how these stories would later evolve into these much longer works and how Murakami can work an idea that was originally a twenty-five page story into a six hundred page novel.

Not all of the stories in this volume are perfect gems, but there are no chunks of glass either. Each brings something different to the fore and they can easily grasp the reader's heart. I believe that "Tony Takitani," Murakami's lone short story from 1990, might be the most heartrending work by the author because of its themes of love and loss. Also, I believe that this volume would be a good introduction to new readers of Murakami, because it gives equal doses of odd and normal. However, what exactly is odd and what exactly is normal?