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Men Without Women

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Men Without Women

By: Haruki Murakami
Narrated by: Bruno Roubicek
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Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.©2014 Harukimurakami Archival Labyrinth (P)2017 W.F. Howes Ltd Anthologies Anthologies & Short Stories Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Short Stories Heartfelt Witty Mind-bending
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Taking​ the title from the original Ernest Hemingway novel, Haruki Murakami has updated it for a modern audience in different parts of the world, primarily Japan.

It is a series of portraits of men who have chosen the path of loneliness away from women and the void that it creates when running away from intimacy. Beautiful, simplistic with a wonderful flow, Murakami has a spectacular way of building characters and their anecdotal narratives.

Modern day Hemingway

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As with most collections of short stories, some are better others, but overall the quality is really high. My personal favourite is the one about the bar owner. Very good narration too, pacing and intonation are spot on.

7 stories... 4 excellent, 3 merely good

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My first Murakami book. It left me with the impression that the author is interested in heterosexual men romantic loneliness, and women having multiple sexual partners. As I have no way to draw comparisons with other Murakami audiobooks, I think the performance was good as it was neutral and allowed me to fill the emotional blanks.

About the stories themselves, Murakami's narrative is always interesting and agile, and there's a couple of stories that will stay with me. Overall an interesting book to accompany your daily activities.

Overall fun

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I have loved some recent books and this narration by Bruno Roubicek throws into relief the importance, the vital importance, of a good narrator. The writing had a deadened, flat quality and Murakami is never dead or flat. I really didn't like this (as you might have gathered, lol).

Murakami deserves better

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I found the Japanese context quite interesting but ultimately the stories were a bit monolithic and somewhat odd. There's also a sense of the stories ending abruptly, perhaps because the author had run out of steam on that idea. Not really an attention grabber, I was quite keen to get to the end of this audio book.

Culturally interesting, slightly offbeat stories

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