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Manoa 15.1 (2003) 187-188



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After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Jay Rubin. New York: Knopf, 2002. 193 pages, cloth $22.

In After the Quake: Stories, Haruki Murakami has invented six masterpieces loosely connected by the Kobe earthquake of 1995. In elegant prose, he combines fantasy, surrealism, comedy, and restrained emotion to tell stories of the aftermath of the disastrous quake. My favorites are "Landscape without Flatiron," "Thailand," and "Honey Pie." The first is a beautifully wrought tale of Junko, a rootless young woman who is drawn to an older suicidal artist who routinely builds structures out of driftwood and then sets fire to them on the beach. Their shared intimacy of this ritual is "warming" to Junko's heart even though the artist tells her, "When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling the cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not." [End Page 187]

"Thailand" is the tale of a middle-aged woman doctor specializing in thyroid medicine who takes a vacation in Thailand and learns from a native spiritualist that her unlived life and stoney unforgiveness have created a rock in her gut that, after she dies and is cremated, will be all that is left in her ashes.

"Honey Pie" tells the story of Junpei, an introspective writer, and his strange "ménage à trois" relationship (not sexual) with his best friend Takatsuki, and his wife, Sayoko, with whom he has been in love since college days. After Sayoko and Takatsuki divorce, the narrator remains close to the wife and daughter and finally releases his pent-up yearning by creating a bedtime story for the child that reveals his frustrations and failings.

In these stories, Murakami is a genius at transforming bizarre, inconceivable situations into emotionally powerful stories that explore the longing and withheld expressions of love that imprison man in this absurd creation called modern life.

A joy to read, and knock-out writing.

 



Jeanne Houston

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is the coauthor with her husband, novelist James Houston, of Farewell to Manzanar, based on her family's imprisonment in the Japanese-American internment camps of World War ii. She also coauthored the Viet Nam memoir Don't Cry, It's Only Thunder and authored a book of personal essays, Beyond Manzanar. She recently completed her first novel, Firehorse Woman.

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