Published as its own dinky lil book in celebration of the author’s 70th this year, Haruki Murakami’s Birthday Girl (previously published in the Birthday Stories anthology) is about a waitress who, on her 20th birthday, takes dinner to the reclusive restaurant owner who lives above her workplace - a person who isn’t quite who he appears to be at first…
Birthday Girl is a decent story. It’s well-written as always and I liked that Murakami took what initially seemed to be a mundane tale into a magical realist direction towards the end. It’s the kind of thing Murakami does so well and it also tied in perfectly with the birthday theme.
It does take a while to get going though, which ain’t great considering it’s quite short anyway, and I felt that the ending was unsatisfying in its vagueness. I wanted more from the story than I got and it seemed a bit of a cop-out to end it like that. Or more likely I’m too dim to have understood it!
Murakami’s written better stories but Birthday Girl wasn’t bad - happy 70th, sir!
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