Stories About Men Without Women

     Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami.

     This is one of the books we bought at the last Manila International Book Fair.  The title fascinated me. It is a  Japanese book that was translated in English. It was the first time I heard of Mr. Murakami. It is a collection of (7) short stories and Wikipedia describes the stories as about (lonely) men who have lost women in their lives, usually to other men or death. (Incidentally, Ernest Hemingway had a collection of stories with the same title, which was published in 1927.)  I only started reading it yesterday and I have finished just one story, the first one, entitled “Drive My Car,” which narrates the story of Kafuku, an introverted stage actor in his fifties, who befriended Takatsuki, also a stage actor. Takatsuki was the former secret lover of Kafuku’s recently dead wife. The reason Kafuku befriended him was to take revenge and destroy him. Takatsuki was unaware that Kafuku had knowledge of his affair with Kafuku’s wife. They would frequent a bar and drink and converse, the topic often drifting towards Kafuku’s late wife.

     Kafuku, a relatively nice man,  also had been racking his mind on why his wife, a beautiful and smart woman and a first-rate stage actress,  fell for Takatsuki, who was an average man, a man of little consequence and a second-rate actor, add to that the fact that he was a married man. Really, why would any woman be even fond of a married man?

     I haven’t read another story, I don’t know but Kafuku and his story sort of took me to a melancholy trip, and I’m quite apprehensive that the other stories in the book will do the same.