In First Person Singular, international bestselling author and critically acclaimed storyteller Haruki Murakami (IQ84) offers eight poignant and atmospheric short stories. In "Cream," a young man reflects on the elusive meaning behind seemingly confounding life experiences. In the titular "First Person Singular," the narrator experiences a surreal and noirish encounter with a woman who mistakes him for someone else on a lonely evening in a bar. Whether offering an imaginative review of a nonexistent album in "Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova" or reflecting on his own poetry inspired by the experience of in-person baseball games in "The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection," Murakami's signature and yet still mesmerizing first-person singular voice shines.
Scattered throughout these tales is Murakami's magical touch of whimsy and nostalgia, both his melancholic tone and his playfulness. His protagonists experience their world with a kind of clear-eyed lucidity despite their admissions, as in "Cream," that "a deeper understanding eludes me." The sense of this clarity comes from Murakami's prose itself, as well as his nonchalant approach to the extraordinary. The collection's stand-out, "Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey," never shies away from fantastical elements (the titular talking monkey) and yet directs its gaze much more earnestly to the story's emotional core (the monkey's uncomfortably familiar loneliness and his unnerving ability to steal the names of the human women he loves). These short stories, like all of Murakami's best work, demonstrate his talent of being able to make complex concepts seem simple and graspable, if only for a fleeting moment. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor