Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge 2011: Book Review 2 of 5

after the quake
By Haruki Murakami
Barnes & Noble link

*Note: this is the second of five reviews for the Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge*

Short stories are a strange animal. You are telling the story of people, places, and things; and yet you only have a limited amount of time. All there is time for is the important stuff, the "greatest hits" of it, if you would. It takes a different set of skills to reach shortened-literary perfection. Even novelists are daunted by them. Haruki Murakami remained, as usual, undaunted by a challenge. While he's done it before, he achieved his finest hour in after the quake.



The book, containing six stories, is a condolence letter to a confused and hurt nation. At the time of writing, Kobe was struck by a massive earthquake. It killed many, destroyed infrastructure, and sent the whole nation into a dark state of worry. Each tale focuses on how the earthquake has affected the denizens. All share one thing in common: it is a time of growth, a time of change, and a time for courage.

The one story that I always return to in this book is the concluding "Honey Pie", about Junpei and his longing for his best friend Sayoko. She had married Junpei's best friend and had a daughter named Sala. Eventually, the couple divorced. The earthquake complicated matters more (it gave Sala nightmares). To comfort the scared child, Junpei tells her the story of two friendly bears. Throughout, the story begins to reflect the situation between Junpei and his friend. And the more Sayoko sees of Junpei, the more the longing becomes undeniable. "Honey Pie" is sad, full of regret and unrequited love. It is a true representation of what happens during a national tragedy: it marks the air, but time ticks on.

All the stories deserve attention. They are surrealistic ("Super-frog Saves Tokyo"), reflective ("Landscape in Flatiron", "All God's Children Can Dance"), and bittersweet ("UFO in Kushiro", "Thailand"). All different flavors of human experience. And they are classic Murakami. People in unusual situations, asking how to continue even during a time of fear and mourning.

With the citizens struggling to shake off the recent tragedies in Fukushima and the rest of northern Japan, the book and its stories become not just a symbol of the past, but of the present times. Literature can scare us, inform us, and trick us. But it also can heal us. Remind us of the silly old sayings that we tell ourselves each morning: "life will go on", "tomorrow is a new day", etc. Even if you don't believe that, it helps to see that you are not alone in the struggle to survive.

May this book and many others like it heal us all during this times of rage and thunder and quakes.

"Our hearts are not stones. A stone my disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another. All God's children can dance."

- from "All God's Children Can Dance" on page 68

COPYRIGHT NOTE: all bold quotes are from the novel and were written by the author himself. Those words are not my own.