First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami Book review

First-person singular by Haruki Murakami is a collection of eight short stories and these stories deal with different themes one of the most recurring themes in this book is that of music which is something that you can expect in a Murakami book

Other themes are those about recounting memories from the past of being nostalgic of the narrator having certain very fascinating encounters and as far as the narration of these eight short stories is concerned

They all have been narrated in the first person but it is only in the last few stories that I felt that the narrator was Murakami himself apart from that in the first few stories

The narrator seemed like a random person to me so on the whole the vibe of this book to me was very semi-autobiographical the overall vibe of this book was quite fictional although all these fiction stories were presented rather realistically

So that was something that I really liked so this book has 250 pages and I was able to finish this book in two sittings which I feel is a pretty smooth reading experience because I did not have to force myself to read

This book even once I found the reading experience to be quite effortless which is good although I must admit that this is by no means my favorite short story book because on the whole reading

This book was an okay experience for me and that is because there were some stories that I definitely liked but then there were others that I didn't really care much

They didn't have much of an impact on me which is why this book was a mixed bag for me so now I want to talk about a few stories from this book

So there is a story called confessions of a Shinagawa monkey in this book and when I started reading that story i was immediately reminded of another short story collection by Murakami which is called blind willow sleeping woman

Now in that short story collection, there is a story called the Shinagawa monkey and this book has a story called confessions of a Shinagawa monkey these are both different stories

but they are both connected obviously so when I read the version of the story in this book I was immediately able to understand the perspective of the Sheena GABA monkey

which was very interesting so if you haven't read blind below sleeping woman it won't really matter to you because the story in this book is completely independent of that other story

but if you have read blind willow sleeping woman then forming that connection between both the stories is going to be rather interesting and satisfying another story that I want to mention specifically is called carnival

In this book so this story was quite engaging honestly but the way Murakami went about narrating the story was a little bit disconcerting because in this story he begins by talking about a woman that he found really ugly and all through

In the story, he just goes about mentioning how ugly she was so that was rather weird because the story, on the whole, had a lot of elements had a lot going on, and had he not really focused so much on how unattractive

If he found her the story would still have been engaging so the fact that he keeps on going about how ugly she looks was a little bit weird to me as a reader

So that was something I wasn't very crazy about this book has a very relaxed and a very nostalgic vibe which was something that I definitely enjoyed in this book and as I said before

There were certain things that I wasn't particularly crazy about and then some stories just did not reach me so overall for me reading this book was a mixed bag and that is totally fine

I have had this experience with other Murakami books in the past as well but that doesn't stop me from reading titles by him because I am always drawn to books written by Murakami

So i was going to read it anyway now Murakami is known for writing stories and novels that have magical realism and stories that are surreal so those elements are present in this book as well

But I feel personal that they were present in a manner that was very mild and toned down so if you are somebody who hasn't yet read a book by Murakami and you want to begin reading books by him

Then you can think of starting with this book because the thing is that when you read a Murakami book for the first time you can get overwhelmed by how unusual his stories are so the unusual aspect is present in this book as well

But it is something that you can digest as a first time Murakami reader at least that's what i feel so that was my review of first-person singular by Haruki Murakami

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