First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami Review

First Person Singular is the worst short story collection Haruki Murakami has put out yet! All of the stories are boring, unimaginative, and so unmemorable. I finished this yesterday and I’ve already forgotten over half of the stories here.

Cream is about a guy who goes to see a girl but ends up talking to an old geezer who says something dumb about cream. On a Stone Pillow is about another guy who hooks up with another girl who writes poetry. Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova is about a jazz fan who imagines he saw a fictional album where Charlie Parker, yes, plays Bossa Nova.

With The Beatles is about a guy who reads part of Akutagawa’s short story Spinning Gears to the brother of a girl he’s dating. Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey is about a talking monkey at an onsen who steals the identity documents of pretty women. Carnaval is about a man and an ugly woman who appreciate Schumann’s Carnaval but the woman turns out to be doing something illegal on the side.

The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection is the only nonfiction piece here and it’s about Murakami’s lifelong love of the Yakult Swallows baseball team and an obscure self-published poetry collection of his. Reading some of the poems here, you can see why he had to self-publish, despite being a bestselling, internationally famous author. First Person Singular is about a guy who goes to a bar wearing a suit for no reason to read and drink and gets accosted by a woman.

If you’re wondering “... and?” or “so what?” to all of the above, then you’re experiencing what I experienced reading each one of these rubbish stories. Obviously there’s more to each than I’ve mentioned but, actually, it’s not much more. They really are that unremarkable, insubstantial and bland.

All the Murakami cliches are predictably here: jazz, loner guys hooking up with weird girls, something surreal (the talking monkey), literature, and The Beatles, with none of the usual wit or creativity to accompany them. It’s like reading somebody doing bad cover versions of Murakami’s storytelling style.

The stories are all told in the first person but they often are with Murakami so no idea why that’s worth highlighting with the title of the book. Underwhelming and unimpressive throughout, First Person Singular is an awful short story collection that I think even fans will struggle to enjoy - if you haven’t read it and want to read a good Murakami collection, check out after the quake instead.