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Just like it says.
Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a recent collection of seven stories, purportedly covering the theme of the title (which is also the title of the last story, and as far as I know has nothing to do with the Hemingway anthology of the same name). This being Murakami, it’s not so much about men literally being without women as emotionally distant men who have lost women in their lives to infidelity, break-ups, divorce or death and are dealing with the subsequent loneliness – in other words, your typical Murakami protagonist.
Also, this being Murakami, each story has a quirky and slightly surreal feel to it, some more so than others. An actor intentionally befriends one of the men his wife has been sleeping with; a cosmetic surgeon experiences love and jealousy all at once with devastating consequences; a divorced man opens a bar whose first customers are a stray cat and a mysterious book lover. And so on.
The Murakami pendulum generally swings between two templates: weird Lynchian mysteries (A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard Boiled Wonderland, etc) and doomed love stories (Norwegian Wood, etc). So what you make of this may depend on which version of Murakami you prefer, although the stories here swing towards both ends of the spectrum. There’s nothing bad here, but personally I think the weirder ones work better – the best of them being a nifty twist on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” that almost reads like a writing exercise, but it’s very entertaining nonetheless (though perhaps less so if you haven't read Kafka’s story).
Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m at the stage now that when I come across a Le Guin book, I pick it up. This one is slightly obscure in that it’s a republication of her award-winning novella “Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight”, bundled together with other Le Guin short stories and poems that reflect a similar theme to that of the title track – namely, the idea that animals, plants and all of nature speak clearly to us, but we are too self-absorbed to listen to them, or even acknowledge that they can communicate with us, or that they have anything worth saying.
The title track alone is worth the price of admission – a story in which a young girl survives an airplane crash in the Southwestern desert, enters the dream world of animal folklore and is rescued by the trickster Coyote. Other stories tale on the animal’s POV in classic tropes (werewolves, lab rats, horse camps). One indulges in academic discussions of animal languages, while another story (set in Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle universe) chronicles interstellar explorers encountering a planet where the wilderness is alive in more ways than one.
For me, the poems are the weak link here – they’re okay, but the stories are the main attraction. And with a couple of exceptions, they’re classic Le Guin, evoking a wide range of emotions (suspense, melancholy, humor) as each story unfolds. The ecological theme may be a little too ‘on point’ for some readers, but that’s their problem. For myself, it’s always nice to find a book you didn’t know existed by a favorite author – it’s even nicer when it turns out to be a hidden gem. This is one of those.
The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’m on and off with Dashiell Hammett. I was disappointed with The Maltese Falcon, but I liked The Thin Man, so I thought he was worth trying again. This one features his nameless detective known as ‘the Continental Op’, who here is working for an insurance company and is sent out to investigate a case in which diamonds have been stolen from Edgar Leggett, who was hired to perform colorizing experiments with them. Things quickly get complicated as people end up dead, supposedly thanks to Leggett’s stepdaughter Gabrielle Dain, a dope addict who believes her family line is cursed.
The fact that the novel was serialized in Black Mask magazine probably explains why the three parts are technically three separate but interconnected mysteries involving theft, staged suicides, religious cults, ghosts, and murder, all revolving around Gabrielle Dain. Each part ends in spectacular fashion, and the whole thing is capped off by the Continental Op discovering the overarching connection between all three and the secret behind the curse.
It’s pulpier than I expected Hammett to be, and it was after I read it that I found out many fans consider it to be his worst novel mainly for that reason. I can’t speak to that, but what I can say is that while Hammett’s prose is quite good, the plot is ridiculously convoluted and the resolution is both predictable and yet highly improbable – I pegged the culprit fairly early but the explanation beggars belief. Overall, it’s pretty loopy, and not necessarily in a good way. The fairly blatant racism is also hard to take, even when making allowances for social attitudes of late 20s San Francisco.
View all my reviews
Curses foiled again,
This is dF
Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki MurakamiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a recent collection of seven stories, purportedly covering the theme of the title (which is also the title of the last story, and as far as I know has nothing to do with the Hemingway anthology of the same name). This being Murakami, it’s not so much about men literally being without women as emotionally distant men who have lost women in their lives to infidelity, break-ups, divorce or death and are dealing with the subsequent loneliness – in other words, your typical Murakami protagonist.
Also, this being Murakami, each story has a quirky and slightly surreal feel to it, some more so than others. An actor intentionally befriends one of the men his wife has been sleeping with; a cosmetic surgeon experiences love and jealousy all at once with devastating consequences; a divorced man opens a bar whose first customers are a stray cat and a mysterious book lover. And so on.
The Murakami pendulum generally swings between two templates: weird Lynchian mysteries (A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard Boiled Wonderland, etc) and doomed love stories (Norwegian Wood, etc). So what you make of this may depend on which version of Murakami you prefer, although the stories here swing towards both ends of the spectrum. There’s nothing bad here, but personally I think the weirder ones work better – the best of them being a nifty twist on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” that almost reads like a writing exercise, but it’s very entertaining nonetheless (though perhaps less so if you haven't read Kafka’s story).
Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences by Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m at the stage now that when I come across a Le Guin book, I pick it up. This one is slightly obscure in that it’s a republication of her award-winning novella “Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight”, bundled together with other Le Guin short stories and poems that reflect a similar theme to that of the title track – namely, the idea that animals, plants and all of nature speak clearly to us, but we are too self-absorbed to listen to them, or even acknowledge that they can communicate with us, or that they have anything worth saying.
The title track alone is worth the price of admission – a story in which a young girl survives an airplane crash in the Southwestern desert, enters the dream world of animal folklore and is rescued by the trickster Coyote. Other stories tale on the animal’s POV in classic tropes (werewolves, lab rats, horse camps). One indulges in academic discussions of animal languages, while another story (set in Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle universe) chronicles interstellar explorers encountering a planet where the wilderness is alive in more ways than one.
For me, the poems are the weak link here – they’re okay, but the stories are the main attraction. And with a couple of exceptions, they’re classic Le Guin, evoking a wide range of emotions (suspense, melancholy, humor) as each story unfolds. The ecological theme may be a little too ‘on point’ for some readers, but that’s their problem. For myself, it’s always nice to find a book you didn’t know existed by a favorite author – it’s even nicer when it turns out to be a hidden gem. This is one of those.
The Dain Curse by Dashiell HammettMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’m on and off with Dashiell Hammett. I was disappointed with The Maltese Falcon, but I liked The Thin Man, so I thought he was worth trying again. This one features his nameless detective known as ‘the Continental Op’, who here is working for an insurance company and is sent out to investigate a case in which diamonds have been stolen from Edgar Leggett, who was hired to perform colorizing experiments with them. Things quickly get complicated as people end up dead, supposedly thanks to Leggett’s stepdaughter Gabrielle Dain, a dope addict who believes her family line is cursed.
The fact that the novel was serialized in Black Mask magazine probably explains why the three parts are technically three separate but interconnected mysteries involving theft, staged suicides, religious cults, ghosts, and murder, all revolving around Gabrielle Dain. Each part ends in spectacular fashion, and the whole thing is capped off by the Continental Op discovering the overarching connection between all three and the secret behind the curse.
It’s pulpier than I expected Hammett to be, and it was after I read it that I found out many fans consider it to be his worst novel mainly for that reason. I can’t speak to that, but what I can say is that while Hammett’s prose is quite good, the plot is ridiculously convoluted and the resolution is both predictable and yet highly improbable – I pegged the culprit fairly early but the explanation beggars belief. Overall, it’s pretty loopy, and not necessarily in a good way. The fairly blatant racism is also hard to take, even when making allowances for social attitudes of late 20s San Francisco.
View all my reviews
Curses foiled again,
This is dF
