I have loved many a Murakami book in my time. Ever since I discovered him in college, I have torn through many of his books and short stories. And while I like his writing and actually don’t mind how unpenetrable it can be at times, here I just found myself frustrated by him. There’s a deep well of misogyny that permeates his work and unfortunately, it was glaringly obvious here. Every story mentioned women in ways that sexualized them or made them out to be objects. While I didn’t notice those kinds of things when I was reading him in college, I did notice it now and it made me like these stories less. I still think murakami is a great author. I just wish his misogyny wasn’t so prominent and so blatant. It puts a bad taste in my mouth and now I’m wondering if I should go back and re read some of his other works to see if I can spot the misogyny.