The Elephant Vanishes
Reviews
If you are new to Murakami, this book is the right choice to understand the many layers of his works.
5 for the lawn, 4 for on seeing 100% perfect girl and an average of 3.5 for the rest
I typically really enjoy the little stories that Murakami weaves into his novels. They're quaint. Or mundane. But always interesting. However, on their own, they're not very remarkable. At least this collection of stories isn't. There is one heartbreaking tale about ‘arrogant young lovers’ that really affected me. Other than that, none of the stories caused me to feel much at all.
It was a neat collection of very Murakami-like stories. Most of them have some kind of indirect connections to each other, like cats, or daiquiris, or a narrator working at PR department of a household electronics firm, or a man named Noboru Watanabe, or strange dreams that warp the reality, or uneatable spaghetti. Maybe because of that I had a hard time differentiating separate stories. The few that really stood out for me were The Second Bakery Attack, Sleep, and The Dancing Dwarf. I loved the quirkiness of the first one, strange contemplative nature of the second, and the dark fairytale feel of the third. Also, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning is incredibly beautiful and sad for being so short. These are probably the four I would recommend the most.
3.5 maybe. Most of the stories feel incomplete.
Murakami's short stories are the user-friendly version of his works.
3-3.5 stars on a re-read.
3.5
So many great stories !
mhm i have a lot to say and also really nothing that will make any sense strung together at all about this book. i read it all in one day (maybe that was the reason i couldnt appreciate it as much as other people seem to?) but anyways i definitely loved some of the short stories and disliked others
Some wonderful stories, but also some that left me confused as to why Mr. Murakami included them in the collection.
I love the idea of the different voices within this book of short stories and their neurotic adventures about the mysteries of life before realising it may not actually be worth it. All of the characters have a unique voice and experience. There's a connection between all of these stories and they're all a tad bit relatable.
Classic Murakami. Some stories in here deviate from what you'd expect, but for the most part, these stories truly take you into the minds of his characters. You feel so close to their thoughts and get lost in their world behind their eyes. Maybe its my own approach, but I always thought Murakami as a very cerebral, personal, subjective author, one that presents the world through thought rather than narration. You hear their inner dialogue, and its beautiful.
Highlights
Hold tight, I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.
I was going through life asleep
Being a solitary entity is dreadfully depressing.
I want to be able to be in two places at once. That is my one and only wish. Other than that, there’s not a thing I desire.
Here I had me thinking, and here I had me observing myself think. Time ticked on in impossibly minute polyrhythms.
If birds in flight go unburdened by names, let my memories be free of dates.
My recall is a damn sight short of total. It’s so unreliable that I sometimes think I’m trying to prove something by it. But what would I be proving? Especially since inexactness is not exactly the sort of thing you can prove with any accuracy.
the curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book.
some things I’d like to forget. But the more I try to wipe them away, the more they pop into my mind. You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?
Makes me wonder if things are only memories.
Oh, friends, my friends, China is so far away.
Each movement was simple enough in itself, but in combination the four produced an almost incredible beauty of motion, erupting from the dwarf’s body all at once, as when a globe of light bursts open.
“You’re music itself.”
Why is it you can’t forget what you really want to forget?
That’s probably because people are looking for a kind of unity in this kit-chin we know as the world. Unity of design. Unity of color. Unity of function.
Maybe, in the end, our hopes were the wrong way around. But what am I, what are you, if not a misdiagnosis? And if so, is there a way out?
All I want to do is simply burn barns.
When the two of us were together, I could truly relax. I’d forget all about work I didn’t want to do and trivial things that’d never be settled anyway and the crazy mixed-up ideas that crazy mixed-up people had taken into their heads. It was some kind of power she had. Not that there was any great meaning to her words. And if I did catch myself interjecting polite nothings without really tuning in what she was saying, there still was something soothing to my ears about her voice, like watching clouds drift across the far horizon.
I close my eyes and darkness descends, a darkness painted blind with colours.