Men Without Women

The call came in after one a.m. and woke me up. Phones ringing in the middle of the night always sound harsh and grating, like some savage metal tool out to destroy the world. I felt it was my duty, as a member of the human race, to put a stop to it, so I got out of bed, padded over to the living room, and picked up the receiver.

A man s low voice informed me that a woman had vanished from this world forever. The voice belonged to the woman s husband. At least that s what he said. And he went on. My wife committed suicide last Wednesday, he said. In any case, I thought I should let you know. In any case. As far as I could make out, there was not a drop of emotion in his voice. It was like he was reading lines meant for a telegram, with barely any space at all between each word. An announcement, pure and simple. Unadorned reality. Period.

What did I say in response? I must have said something, but I can t recall. At any rate, there was a prolonged period of silence. Like a deep hole in the middle of the road that the two of us were staring into from opposite sides. Then, without a word, as if he were gently placing a fragile piece of artwork on the floor, the man hung up. I stood there, in a white T-shirt and blue boxers, pointlessly clutching the phone.

How did he know about me? I have no idea. Had she mentioned my name to her husband, as an old boyfriend? But why? And how did he know my phone number (which was unlisted)? In the first place, why me? Why would her husband go to the trouble of calling me to let me know his wife had died? I couldn t imagine she d left a request like that in a farewell note. We d broken up years earlier. And we d never seen each other since not even once. We had never even talked on the phone.

That s neither here nor there. The bigger problem was that he didn t explain a single thing to me. He thought he needed to let me know his wife had killed herself. And somehow he d gotten hold of my phone number.

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, whose previous recipients include J. K. Rowling, Isabel Allende, and Salman Rushdie.

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. . . . Part allegory, part myth, part magic realism, part Philip Marlowe, private eye. . . . Murakami puts the performance in performance art. The New York Times Book Review

Time and again in these seven stories, Murakami displays his singular genius. . . . The stories in this collection find their power within the confines of common but momentous disturbances that linger on in memory. Los Angeles Times
 
Mesmerizing tales of profound alienation. . . . Murakami is a master of the open-ended mystery. The Washington Post
 
Beautifully rendered. . . . Murakami at his whimsical, romantic best. . . . [He] writes of complex things with his usual beguiling simplicity the same seeming naivety found in the Beatles songs that are so often his reference points. The stories read like dirges for all the lonely people but they are strangely invigorating to read. Financial Times
 
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
 
A whimsical delight. . . . The seven stories in his fourth story collection present another captivating treasure hunt of familiar Murakami motifs including cats, jazz, whiskey, certain cigarettes, the moon, baseball, never-named characters, and of course the many men without women. . . . Murakami always manages to entertain, surprise, and satisfy. . . . Sanity might be overrated, but Murakami is surely not. The Christian Science Monitor
 
Wise stories. . . . Moody and melancholic as [they] can be, some of them offer comparable hope that these men without women might emerge from their long and isolating loneliness, acknowledging the hurt, pain and even rage they feel