Murakami is one of Japan’s finest authors.  In more than 30 novels, short story collections, and essay collections, he has consistently created fascinating and strange worlds in which he manipulates interesting characters who search for meaning and self-knowledge.  I’ve read a number of his books and have always found them to be thought-provoking and engaging.

This short story collection was widely reviewed, and Literary Hub named it one of the 10 best reviewed books of 2021.  Like his prior novels and short stories, this volume’s eight stories are strange and unsettling.  In one, a talking monkey who works in a country inn shares his method for stealing the identity of women with whom he has fallen in love.  In another, a brief encounter in a high school hallway with a girl carrying a Beatles album sets the narrator off on a story about a different girl including riffs on Troy Donahue, the Beatles, and Percy Faith’s Theme on a Summer Place.  The eponymous story is even stranger when Murakami, as the narrator, describes meeting a woman at a bar who expresses anger for how he had treated a friend of hers, a friend who Murakami has no recollection of.

The stories share a theme of uncertain memory leading to confusion and instability of one’s self-image.  Not only does Murakami explore the oft-expressed idea that we cannot truly know any other person, but adds to it the impossibility of truly knowing yourself.  Who are we really?  Where have we been and who have we crossed paths with?

These are not action-packed or quietly soothing tales. They are meant to discomfit the reader by an author who is constantly asking us to look more deeply at ourselves, our friends and loved ones, and at the world which goes on and on even as we disappear.