| After the Quake: A Review |
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| Written by Gabe Knipp | |||||
| Saturday, 07 July 2007 01:06 | |||||
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Short stories. Most of us read them in high school or college and rarely pick up an anthology again. Yet, short stories are the way we talk to each other, the way we communicate. Not long ago I sat at my dinner table with a friend as he recounted
the end of his engagement: he told short stories. The story of how they grew apart. The story of how he was coping. Short stories are the way that we often interpret the world. Haruki Murakami (say it 3 times fast) is a Japanese writer who wrote After the Quake following the Kobe earthquake in Japan, 1995. The six stories are tied together by the simple setting -- each occurs in the aftermath of the earthquake. You are reminded of this as you read, and a conversation between a man and woman becomes infused with depth by the simple fact that on the television images of real destruction flick across the screen. Murakami straddles the line between sentimentality and despair, and he does it well. The earthquake has reminded each character of their fragility. Yet, Murakami brings hope and life to them, sometimes in a Paulo Coelho-esque manner (as in Thailand) and sometimes by bringing characters face-to-face with the absurd (Super-Frog Saves Tokyo) and the absurd within themselves. After the Quake is an incredibly accessible book for those away from the realm of short stories. It tells the stories that we tell ourselves to keep going: stories of both hope and fear. It tells the stories within the stories, and though none deal directly with the Kobe earthquake, we feel its humanity: estranged parents or a separated wife live there. It parallels Katrina or 9/11 for us in America who weren't devastated by those events, but lived through their time. TAGS: sentimentality , conversation , destruction , accessible , characters , devastated , earthquake , engagement , incredibly , television ,
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Comments (1)
Kelsey Mickelson
said:
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response Sounds interesting. I'll look for it at Barnes and Noble sometime. Kelsey Mickelson Aurora,Co |
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