... brilliant ... One can feel him easing up in the eight stories collected in First Person Singular, allowing his own voice—or what sounds like his own voice, wonderfully translated by Philip Gabriel—to enter the narratives, creating a confessional tone that reminded me of Alice Munro’s late work ... Murakami is not popular throughout the world because he consciously integrates Western ideas and language into his fiction, but because his work—fueled by a tension with his forebears—fuses cultures, or perhaps leaps over them, defying time, beating like pop songs, touching universal nerves ... That’s how Murakami’s stories often roll, luring us into strange moments, making us ask the questions we once chewed on about life, about what it means to bear the burden of selfhood, about how time seems to bend around us like the wind around the trees—invisible but clearly active ... As a short story writer myself, I feel my own acute inability to urge the reader to spend time with this collection, to purchase a sequence of brief experiences that will not, as a novel might, immerse them in the hours of a steadily unfurling narrative. But these are flickering, quick times, and what a story can do that a novel can’t is pull us into the intricate motions of a single instant, expansive on both ends—the before of everything before the narrative begins, and the infinite future beyond the terminal sentences—and, like a song, or a poem, leave us wanting to reread, to rehear the voice, to relocate the pinpoint in the map of our lives.
... a blazing and brilliant return to form ... a taut and tight, suspenseful and spellbinding, witty and wonderful group of eight stories ... there isn’t a weak one in the bunch. The stories echo with Murakami’s preoccupations. Nostalgia and longing for the charged, evocative moments of young adulthood. Memory’s power and fragility; how identity forms from random decisions, 'minor incidents,' and chance encounters; the at once intransigent and fragile nature of the 'self.' Guilt, shame, and regret for mistakes made and people damaged by foolish or heartless choices. The power and potency of young love and the residual weight of fleeting erotic entanglements. Music’s power to make indelible impressions, elicit buried memories, connect otherwise very different people, and capture what words cannot. The themes become a kind of meter against which all the stories make their particular, chiming rhythms ... The reading experience is unsettled by a pervasive blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality, dream and waking ... Most of the narrators foreground the act of telling and ruminate on the intention behind and effects of disclosing secrets, putting inchoate impulses, fears, or yearnings into clear, logical prose ... This mesmerizing collection would make a superb introduction to Murakami for anyone who hasn’t yet fallen under his spell; his legion of devoted fans will gobble it up and beg for more.
The book, while emblematic of [Murakami's] short work in particular, doesn't break new ground like his recent novels, 1Q84 and Killing Commendatore, but it's an enjoyable read that goes down easily ... Murakami's plainspoken short stories, like his more complex novels, raise existential questions about perception, memory, and the meaning of it all — though he's the opposite of heavy-handed, and rarely proposes answers ... There are a few missteps in this collection, including a tedious disquisition on ugly versus beautiful women in a story about a friendship with a homely woman based on a shared musical passion. A surprising revelation again highlights how superficial our knowledge of most people is ... But 'Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey' is a standout that will appeal especially to readers enchanted by Murakami's surrealist turns, which blur the line between dreams and reality ... From his fans' perspective, of course, and on the further evidence of this winning collection, Murakami hasn't had to swallow much defeat ...
