Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami, 2014

Men Without Women Review

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami is a quiet collection about absence: men circling the edges of love, memory, and the rooms they cannot re enter. First published in Japanese in 2014 and in English in 2017, it gathers seven stories that move between realism and the faint hum of the surreal. For you, this book offers spare emotion, music on low volume, and the feeling of a city at midnight after the lights go out.

Overview

Murakami writes in clean lines with odd corners. You will notice ordinary details that tilt the world: a bar with one loyal customer, a scar that changes a face, a story told twice. The mood is steady and blue. Humor shows up as a shrug that carries real warmth.

Summary

In Drive My Car, an actor hires a driver and confesses what he can admit only on the move. Yesterday pairs Beatles lyrics with a friendship that cannot choose its shape. In Kino, a man opens a bar and finds that quiet can be dangerous company. Scheherazade imagines a woman who tells stories after sex as if telling them were survival. Samsa in Love flips Kafka and finds tenderness under strangeness. Without spoiling endings, the collection maps loneliness that is chosen, inherited, and sometimes briefly undone by a conversation.

Author

Haruki Murakami blends everyday rhythm with small portals to the unreal. He trusts silence and lets the reader lean in. You benefit from voices that feel unforced and images that stay.

Key Themes

You will explore solitude as habit and bruise. You will see how music and routine hold people together. You will consider desire as a language that is easy to misread. You will meet memory as a house with locked rooms.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: gentle pacing, humane observation, and pockets of magic that do not demand attention. Weaknesses: emotional restraint may feel distant, and answers stay offstage. Overall: a tender set of stories that make quiet feel full.

Target Audience

Best for readers who like minimalist prose, urban melancholy, and character studies that value tone over plot. Good for late night reading and slow conversations.

Favorite Quotes

Short lines land: love leaves shadows, silence has weight, memory edits kindly and not kindly.

Takeaways

For you, the takeaway is that absence is not empty: it has shape, sound, and temperature. The book teaches how to listen to what is not being said.