I'm not sure if it might be that I've been away from Murakami for a little while and so I've forgotten a touch what he's like, or perhaps that I've so thoroughly internalised his world that it seems normal, or maybe that there actually has been a discernible shift in his style, but overall Men Without Women, like his most recent novel Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, seemed to me to tend considerably more realistic than has been typical for him in the past.
I'm pretty sure there's only one story, "Samsa in Love", which is out and out fantastic, and it's the weakest; having said that, the one with the strongest sense of the uncanny, "Kino", is by a fair margin the best, and it may not be a coincidence that (apart from the fable-like "Samsa") it's also the most resolved of the seven collected here, albeit with resolution being a somewhat relative term as always when it comes to Murakami.
I'm pretty sure there's only one story, "Samsa in Love", which is out and out fantastic, and it's the weakest; having said that, the one with the strongest sense of the uncanny, "Kino", is by a fair margin the best, and it may not be a coincidence that (apart from the fable-like "Samsa") it's also the most resolved of the seven collected here, albeit with resolution being a somewhat relative term as always when it comes to Murakami.
