James Morrison
Shaken and Stirred
After the Quake
By Haruki Murakami
Harvill Press 132pp £9.99
The protagonists in Haruki Murakami's collection of short stories are united in one belief: that there is something indefinable missing from their lives, or, more precisely, from within themselves. We meet Komura, the initially contented hi-fi salesman whose self-image is shattered when his wife walks out leaving a note describing him as 'a chunk of air'; Miyake, the amateur painter who has nightmares about dying in a fridge and lights nightly bonfires to warm his lonely heart ; and Satsuki, the nervy career woman consumed by hatred for her former husband, who has an emotional 'stone' in place of the baby she aborted decades ago.
And there are more. In each of the six thematically linked tales in After the Quake, Murakami paints a disconcertingly believable picture of emotionally isolated characters thrown together by random circumstance and the in escapable urgency of their private despair. What sparks their journeys of self-discovery, not all of them
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk