i don't think this should be anyone;s first murakami

Murakami did it to me again. I feel like I have come up against the profound pain of unknowability and alienation so characteristic of modern life through these series of short stories. This book is also instructive, teaching you how to accept the absurd and senseless. The pleasure of reading this book is in delving into the words of each short story and coming out the other end enriched, entertained, and sometimes moved. I found myself reflecting on memories and emotions long forgotten or left behind too soon. I like how this writing was able to draw this out of me.

I had never read any of Murakami’s books before Men Without Women, and I wish this wasn’t the first one I chose to read. This book dragged for me. I enjoyed the first two or three chapters, but it became a bit repetitive, and honesty boring for me after that. The chapters all had similarities; which really seemed motivated by Murakami’s misogyny. Every chapter’s male character had the same indifference, the same naivety, and a similar disposition. That got old very quick. I always want to finish a book so I can form an opinion. I finished today, and the last chapter frustrated me the most. I really hated the idea of this woman traveling between her “grown self” and “14 year old girl self”. This book frustrated me a bit… and honestly, now I’m a bit unmotivated to delve into his other work.

Loser men who don't like women but still need them (realistic). Someone on reddit said "the most divorced book I've ever read" lol.
Was interesting to read the stories that the Drive My Car film was based on, but most of the stories fell flat. I think Murakami does better in a longer format.

The writing itself is beautiful. The men within are overwhelmed and drowning in their emotions, though not all are overcome in the end. It was difficult not to feel hopeless alongside most of them however and that isn’t something I need to add onto my day to day while treading the water of our current events.

I decided to read Men Without Women because of the Oscar nominated film based on the first story in the book. Murakami did not disappoint. Even though I can hardly say I managed to immerse myself in the stories, in a way I cannot explain, I felt deeply affected by them. There’s just something there we can all relate to, even if I cannot put my finger on it.

Having just finished Murakami's new short story collection, Men Without Women, I am not immediately sure what to say about it. This collection of short vignettes by Murakami does not contain the magical realist pyrotechnics of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle nor the deeply poetic sadness of Norwegian Wood nor the character-driven page-turning mystery of 1Q84. What it does contain are expertly-paced tales made up of quiet, small, moments in the lives of men who all seem to pursue self-abnegation in lieu of love or relationships.

Murakami always does depict alienation, solitariness and quiet moments so very well. In his stories, it seems that these are what he finds most interesting about the human condition. Indeed, in a New Yorker interview, he describes this as his central aim: "What I wish to convey in this collection is, in a word, isolation, and what it means emotionally."

As others have observed, an echo of Hemingway is impossible to ignore. Like Nick Adams or Jake Barnes, the male narrators in these pages seem to observe their own lives and avoid participating too much in anything. Instead, they hold back, repress emotions so expertly they seem not to have any; they have sex but with a cool detachment; they wonder in the dark who they are and what is inside where their hearts should be. In so wondering, they betray their deeply-buried desire and longing.

As if to underscore the universality of male alienation and emotional isolation, we also get a deliberately uncomfortable retelling of Kafta’s Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa awakens again and must reckon with having become a human man, with a clumsy erection that he can’t begin to understand. One message throughout the stories seems to be that the careful repression of self-awareness and emotional communication is not just a characteristic of Japanese culture, though all the stories appear to take place in Japan; it is also a tragic characteristic of masculinity or even humanity in general.

(A note about ratings: Ratings are hard. I am tempted to give this collection two ratings: 4/5 stars, because Murakami on a bad day is still one of the greatest, most subtle and interesting writers of our century. Maybe for me personally, 3/5 stars, because I didn’t enjoy this as much as many of his other works and I probably won’t read it again.)

My reading was biased by the fact that someone told me the author was a bit of a misogyn in his writings, so I kept reading that between the lines. Wish I could put 3,5 stars, but that's not possible.
I especially liked the last short story.