“One day when I ride the yamanoto loop all of a sudden this city will start to go, in a flash the buildings will crumble and I’ll be holding my ticket watching it all. Over the Tokyo streets will fall my China, like ash, leeching into everything it touched, slowly, gradually, until nothing remains. No this isn’t the place for me” 

‘The Elephant Vanishes’ is a collection of short stories by Murakami, many of which focusing on alienation and a subtle magical realism. All the characters were nameless which created a surreal distance from each story. Overall I liked the absurdity when it was subtle but often was tainted by Murakami’s need to include eroticism, to the point where it became a positive when it wasn’t included. I was led to this book after being extremely put off the man for a while from reading ‘Kafka on the Shore’ but Ella (credited as requested..) informed me that it was banned by the Trump administration recently therefore it felt important I read it. Honestly not sure what the motivation of the ban was as all I could really blame was Murakami’s blatant eroticism but that’s typical of his writing and fairly sure not all of his works have been banned in the states? (Yet at least…) I have given a short individual review of each of the seventeen stories and my overall review is the average ! 

 

The Wind Up Bird and Tuesday’s Women - 1.5⭐️: 

Murikami’s opening story of the collection ‘The Elephant Vanishes’ was very much Murikami, in that it had a man looking for a lost cat and the infantilisation of a sixteen year old who is discussing the grotesque whilst they watch for the lost cat, and a mysterious phone call where a woman on the other end is doing the on call equivalent of sexting non-consensually and listening to this on audiobook was disgusting and made it feel like I was receiving this call and hence very uncomfortable. 

 

The Second Bakery Attack - 2.5⭐️: 

A bit of an improvement, nothing remarkable but a story of a couple waking up with a gnawing hunger that they feel they can only resolve by robbing a McDonalds of some burgers. Blends the absurd into the everyday quite nicely but still a little weird. 

 

The Kangaroo Communique - 1.25⭐️: 

A man sends a tape to a customer who sent in a complaint to his company that, though he doesn’t know her, says how he desires to be with her. Felt a bit like the reader was just being mansplained to in a ‘woe is me’ vibe, once again completely non-consensually. 

 

On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning - 1⭐️: 

Really short and unremarkable as a man passes a woman he finds attractive then muses on what he should have said for them to become star-crossed lovers after the opportunity has passed. Very little care for or to say about this one. 

 

Sleep - 4.25⭐️: 

This one had the right level of weirdness that Murikami wasn’t just being a freak. It is about a woman who finds she is functioning fine without sleep after becoming enraptured by rediscovering a love of reading in rereading ‘Anna Karenina’ when unable to sleep one night. This continues for seventeen days as she muses on what is the purpose of sleep and therefore what death is in relation to it. Solid story that gets you thinking. 

 

The Fall of the Roman Empire, The 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s invasion of Poland - 1⭐️: 

Literally just a guy writing his diary, tying the events to historical events that reminded me of Churchill’s ‘This is a Chair’. I’m sure it’s quite clever but really ambiguous and I didn’t enjoy either as there wasn’t really anything to take from them. Murikami somehow managed to weave sex into this though. 

 

Lederhosen -2.5⭐️: 

A man’s wife’s friend tells him about how her parents got divorced as she went to Germany to see her mum, he asked her to bring her back a lederhosen but the shop would only do fittings, her husband not being there with her. This unravels into revealing the reason for the divorce. It was nothing controversial but not much of interest. 

 

Barn Burning - 3.5⭐️: 

A man meets a woman who pretends to peel clementines and she goes to Algiers and comes back with a man. This man smokes and drinks with him one afternoon and confesses to enjoying burning down abandoned barns, which sends the narrative perspective on a wild goose chase. This was the level of magical realism I can appreciate as it was a subtle ambiguity and weirdness that had you on your toes. 

 

The Little Green Monster - 2.75⭐️: 

A woman has a monster dig up into her garden, it can read her mind and confesses its love to her. The monster was so mistreated in this it was honestly a little tragic but extremely unexplained and not sure what Murikami was trying to get at with it. 

 

Family Affair -2⭐️: 

Introspective look on a man who lives with his recently engaged sister but has a reluctance to settle down. Establishes a wholesome sibling dynamic which isn’t often presented when this pair are in their midlives but the narrates other relationships are really poorly done. 

 

A Window - 2.75⭐️: 

A man works for a company that lets people send letters and they provide feedback on how good their letter writing is. It's quite a dystopian and an look into modern alienation, but feel a lot more could’ve been done with the concept. 

 

TV People -4⭐️: 

A man has a TV delivered, they plug it in but it gets no channels. The delivery and set up people ignore him, his wife doesnt notice the TV, one is installed in the office and when he mentions it to the co-workers he gets completely ignored. It was a little magical realist story about alienation which was pretty effective - and no sex! 

 

A Slow Boat to China - 2⭐️: 

A man recounts his interactions with Chinese people, how he took an exam in a Chinese school once, the one Chinese girl he dated and a schoolfriend who he ran into again selling encyclopaedias. It has a passage about Tokyo crumbling in a very reflective manner but feels both like its racially stereotyping and at the same time appreciating individuality in all and not basing impressions on race. Really don’t like that I am very much confused on wether Murikami was being racist with this one or not? 

 

The Dancing Dwarf - 3⭐️: 

A man dreams of a dancing dwarf, who wants him to dance with it in the forest. He learns the next day the dwarf was exiled from the monarchy when the revolution came. It is a surreal tale where he battles being possessed by the dwarf but wanting it to dance for him; very Faustian. There is a scene where maggots begin crawling from someone’s eyes which as pretty haunting and can’t see myself forgetting any time soon. He also works in a factory that makes Elephants as elephants take too long between having babies? Really random one. 

 

The Last Lawn of the Afternoon - 3.25⭐️: 

A student works for a lawn mowing company and is always extremely meticulous. It comments on appreciating the small parts of life and taking it slow but in typical Murikami fashion gets really weird about objectifying women. 

 

Silence - 2.75⭐️: 

A story about a young man who is isolated by all his classmates as he is assumed to have driven a classmate to suicide. Looks at alienation as a consequence of rumours; I appreciate the tying together theme of alienation in many of these stories but ‘TV People’ and ‘Sleep’ are the only ones that really stuck out to me of the collection of them. 

 

The Elephant Vanishes - 2.25⭐️: 

An elephant owned by the city and the zookeeper one day disappear. Strange magical realism at play but for the titular story that it made me wait the whole collection for it was an extremely underwhelming finale.