One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, and Esquire "[A] beguilingly irresistible book. Like a lost lover, it holds on tight long after the affair is over." --
The New York Times Book Review "Classic Murakami. . . . [His] voice--cool, poised, witty, characterized by a peculiar blend of whimsy and poignancy, wit and profundity--hasn't lost its power to unsettle even as it amuses." --
The Boston Globe "Time and again in these seven stories, Murakami displays his singular genius." --
Los Angeles Times "Intimate, captivating and poignant. . . . A short story is brief enough to be perfectible--and
Men Without Women showcases that." --
The Kansas City Star "Beautifully rendered." --
Financial Times "Affecting. . . . Murakami is a master of the open-ended mystery. . . . His meandering, mesmerizing tales of profound alienation are driven by puzzling circumstances that neither his characters nor readers can crack--recalling existentialist Gabriel Marcel's assertion that 'Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced.'" --
The Washington Post "[Murakami] remains in top form." --
San Francisco Chronicle "Each of the seven stories here [is] a gem in and of its own right, but strung together they're a sparkling strand of precious stones, the light refracted from each equally brilliant but the tones varying subtly. . . . I have something of a love/hate relationship with short stories. Too many mediocre offerings leave me despairing of the genre, but then a collection like
Men Without Women comes along and all is forgiven, my faith restored in the recognition of how utterly perfect the medium can be--in the right hands." --Lucy Scholes,
The Independent "Charming and funny." --
Vulture "The best of these stories hold the excitement of a quest: These odd episodes of awakening desire show men startled into an awareness of how they have shorted themselves on life." --Minneapolis
Star Tribune "Murakami's greatest strength is his creation of environments just eccentric enough to wrong-foot you--not exactly magical realism, but perhaps enigmatic realism. . . . When his writing is at its best, his characters act as a fisheye lens through which to scrutinize a slightly off-kilter world that surrounds them." --
The New Republic "Masterful. . . . The mundane gives way suddenly, like an ice floe cracking under our feet, only to reconstitute itself a moment later and swallow up that brief glimpse of what lies below." --
Vice "A whimsical delight. . . . Sanity might be overrated, but Murakami is surely not." --
The Christian Science Monitor
