“Men Without Women” is a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami about men who have lost a meaningful woman in their lives.
One befriends his wife’s lover, another escapes reality by opening a small bar, one spends his days wandering and contemplating, while another starves himself to death.
At first, the actions of these main characters might seem strange and somewhat unsettling. However, through Murakami’s narrative flow and storytelling, I began to empathize with, or at least understand the characters more.
Each person has a different way of reacting to loss. The men in this collection are not weak, useless, or even mentally unstable. They are ordinary men who are simply overwhelmed by unexpected negative emotions beyond their control. Losing the woman in their lives leaves them bewildered, unsure of how to respond. So, they either try to cling to it, avoid it, or are completely consumed by it.
Murakami’s writing style remains calm, simple, and somewhat detached, which is perfectly suited for a collection about the sorrows of men. This is Murakami’s strength: using precise language and clever context to convey complex human emotions.
Occasionally, there are contemplative sentences that I have to reread to grasp what Murakami is trying to convey or if it is simply a purely written line.
An interesting observation, albeit subjective, is that after browsing reviews on Goodreads, it seems that men tend to empathize more with the work, while reviews from women often find the men in these stories strange, passive, and somewhat weak. Perhaps Murakami has touched upon the vulnerability that society rarely sees in men, subtly evoking it through these stories so that men can, in some way, see a part of themselves in them.
“You are a pastel-colored Persian carpet, and loneliness is a Bordeaux wine stain that won’t come out”