Rating: 
Summary: Surreal Love Stories
Review:
Murakami's stories stripped of their fantasy/surrealist veneer are at heart, love stories. The themes of love and loss constantly recur, where reality and fantasy effortlessly overlap and no easy denouements are forthcoming.
It is love, or rather, the obsessive yearning for love, which drives his characters and makes them embark on impossible quests; the object of their love is also the object of their search. And it is this most basic of emotion's that sustains his stories, gives them their human anchor, their warmth, poignancy and humour, even as they spin out of control into ever more preposterous trajectories. However there are no traditional endings to these untraditional love stories, no hands clasped at sunset, no passionate don't-ever-leave-me-again embraces...but even so, there is always, within the ambiguity of loving, the faintest hint at the possibility of redemption through love.
In "ufo in kushiro", the story opens as Komura's wife, after five days of watching coverage of the earthquake's horror, leaves him. She explains, "The problem is that you never give me anything. Or, to put it more precisely, you have nothing inside you that you can give me...living with you is like living with a chunk of air." To an extent, she's right: travelling to freezing Hokkaido because "cold or hot it was all the same to him", displaying next to no curiosity about the mysterious package a colleague has asked him to deliver, drinking coffee that is "more sign than substance", Komura shows little knowledge of or interest in his own interior landscape. Komura is almost perfectly passive, distant from both the world and his own emotions. In distant, cold Hokkaido, he meets a woman who asks him if what his wife said was true. He replies, "I'm not sure...I may have nothing inside me, but what would something be?" Moments later, she provokes in him a moment of violent rage, pure feeling-and in doing so shows him that there is indeed something inside him.
The Kobe disaster wakes these dazed characters, but not immediately. On the plane to Hokkaido, Komura reads coverage of the quake and thinks of his wife, "Why had she followed the TV earthquake reports with such intensity, from morning to night, without eating or sleeping? What could she have seen in them?" She has seen, of course, that everything can disappear in an instant, and she has begun to understand what this means to her life. Her leaving forces the same primal awareness on Komura.
In "all god's children can dance," Yoshiya is told as a little boy that "the Lord" is his father. When he grows up he stops believing that he is anyone special, or that his mother has given birth to him through immaculate conception. Because of this he also loses his faith. When his mother reveals to him that her abortionist, a man with a chewed-off earlobe, is his father, Yoshiya stalks the man he believes to be the one into a dark ghetto, a landscape as barren as his own heart where he finds nothing but the ever-widening mystery of himself.
The stories are all unpredictable and rich in their spare tellings and abrupt endings. Murakami uses the earthquake as a prism to view his characters' their fumbling revelations, and loneliness. We are reminded of our own fault lines in love and friendships and of trying to stand on ever-shifting ground. Emptiness and this unknown "something" (possibly love) that might fill it is what haunt's the characters in these stories when the earthquake rattles their dormant boxes.
Rating:
Summary: Murakami explores psychic aftershocks
Review: By the 79th day of 1995, Japan had suffered both the Kobe earthquake that killed thousands and the terrorist poison-gas attacks in Tokyo subways at morning rush hour. These twin shocks to the Japanese psyche closed out Haruki Murakami's years as a novelist-in-exile: He came home to confront the grief of his fellow nihonjin and subsequently wrote about both disasters._after the quake_ is, in a sense, a fiction companion to Murakami's earlier nonfiction work _Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche_. The six stories of this collection occur in February 1995, weeks after the Kobe earthquake, prior to the Tokyo gas attacks. Not one of these six stories, however, takes place in Kobe. That immediate terror of earth tsunami, that sure horror of structural collapse and fire--it's capsulized as mere TV images, no more. Removed from the physical chaos, the story voices are heard elsewhere: Tokyo, the snow-engulfed northern island of Hokkaido, a balmy vacation resort in Thailand. What is not at a remove for the voices is the psychic aftershocks from the Kobe earthquake that keep rolling through their lives. The lead story, "ufo in kushiro," hints of Raymond Carver (who, while alive, chose Murakami as his Japanese translator). Mystery, unanswerable questions stuffed into a should-be-simple story: A Tokyo housewife, motionless, stares at TV sights and sounds of the Kobe earthquake for five days, loses it, abandons her husband Komura, takes refuge with her parents. A quick divorce follows. Needing a timeout, Komura agrees to help a office colleague. He takes a package with undisclosed content to Hokkaido. There, Komura hears stories: a possible UFO abduction, possibly violent bears. An offer of sexual favors he accepts as if buying a cold beer from a vending machine on the streets of Tokyo only to discover the unthinkable: a Japanese vending machine that is defective! In fact, the defect is in Komura himself and thrumming to Kobe aftershocks, loss of his wife is furthest from his mind. Recovering from his real loss now calls for an inside job and he doesn't know where to start. "landscape with flatiron" acknowledges yet another American author, Jack London, whose story "To Build a Fire" (with the stakes being to stay alive) has some resonance with painter Miyake's life in "a navel-lint nothing of a town" where he chose to live because it got more driftwood than any beach he knew. Besides painting, Miyake's great passion is building driftwood fires. Readers familiar with other works by Murakami will recognize this story as yet another signature meditation on death. Miyake and his female companion Junko take the bonfire on the beach for more than literal survival value: Implicit in the hypnotic flames are the cold ashes later. Drawn to each other, but not in life, Miyake and Junko might happily embrace death as companions. But not before the fire burns out.
Yoshiya in "all god's children can dance" was born to a sexy, teenage mom, who before too long became the most fundamentalist of religious believers: Yoshiya was conceived immaculately, a child of God, because she refused to believe her abortionist's contraceptive techniques would fail him when she finally had knowledge of him. But unbeliever Yoshiya is convinced the abortionist is his secret father. His chase, while nursing a hangover, after the man with the missing earlobe, whom he thinks is the abortionist, turns up empty, but then in Murakami-land, cul-de-sacs have a way of being the pipeline to the "deep space," and so it is for Yoshiya. The balance of the collection includes "thailand," a cautionary tale about a divorcee who had hoped her ex-husband died in Kobe; "super-frog saves tokyo," an imaginative dialogue between Mr. Katagiri and a towering six-foot tall frog who's also the "un-me," the "un-frog," and the "total of all frogs," and who proposes the two will spare Tokyo an even worse earthquake than Kobe; and "honey pie," a story about decades of nondecision and passive observance in writer Junpei's life until Kobe shock brings him home from Barcelona to act. _after the quake_ is a surprisingly diverse sextet of stories unified by the effects of the Kobe devastation: wounded story protagonists, their keen personal loss and emptiness uncovered only after a symphony of mass death--and all told in the undeniably addictive prose style of Murakami-san. A final note: Haruki Murakami insisted that the title of this English edition and its story titles be all lower-case.
Rating:
Summary: Kobe Aftershocks.
Review: Each of the short stories in the excellent "After the Quake" are linked to the terrible earthquake that shook Kobe in Jan'95. Although none are actually set in Kobe, the epicentre of the devastation, allusions to the disaster flit briefly into the radar of each story before quickly dipping out of sight again. Though the characters in these haunting stories are far removed from the scene of the tragedy, the earthquake, nonetheless, reverberates in subtle ways deep into their troubled lives. "UFO" contains elements both of realism and surrealism. Komura's wife spends five intense days transfixed on the earthquake reports on her television, from morning to night, virtually unmoving, oblivious to all else. ("crumbled banks and hospitals, whole blocks of stores in flames, severed rail lines and expressways") Thereafter, abruptly, she deserts Komura. ("you have nothing inside you that you can give me ...living with you is like living with a chunk of air") Komura, a salesman, is requested by Sasaki, a colleague to deliver a packaged box, contents unknown, to Hokkaido. At the receiving end, following a surreal experience, Komura is brought face to face with his own inner emptiness. In "Landscape With Flat Iron", Junko, a young woman, enjoys the company of Miyake, a forty-something painter who lights midnight beach bonfires stacked from driftwood. Miyake can look at fires in the way "a sculptor can imagine the pose of a figure hidden in a lump of stone." Gazing at the shapes the bonfire makes elevates Junko to a higher plane of being; watching the fire, she gets "this deep, quiet kind of feeling" where revelations and deeper truths come to her. Similar revelatory moments are experienced in "All God's Children Can Dance" by Yoshiya - he has been following the man he thought was the father he has been searching for - as he stands on the pitchers mound in a deserted baseball pitch bathed in the light of a huge moon. In "Thailand", a female doctor on vacation, soured and embittered by a divorce, is driven by her chauffeur to see an old woman who informs her, "There is a stone inside your body ...You must get rid of the stone." The earthquake is perhaps more central to "Super Frog Saves Tokyo" than it is in other stories. A giant frog enlists Kalagiri's help to save Tokyo from a gigantic worm that causes earthquakes when it's angry. Frog says earthquakes make people realise how fragile the ordinary world, "the intensive collectivity known as the city", in this case the city of Tokyo, really is. Murakami here, is referring not just to the fragile physical environment but also to the fragility of emotional rocks such as love, marriage, the family unit, friendships that underpin our inner lives. "Honey Pie", the last and best story, is also the most conventional. Junpei, too shy to move in on Sayoko, his heart's desire, loses out in the marriage stakes to the more forward Takasaki, his best friend. Sala, the young child of the marriage, deeply fears "the earthquake man". When Sayoko and Takasaki later divorce, Junpei, who has remained close to them, is still unable to express his undying love for Sayoko. He tells Sala a story to ease her mind about "the earthquake man"...
Rating:
Summary: awesome!!
Review: For a long long time now, I'd been wanting to read
this new book by one of my Favorite writers and when I
did I was beyond elation... Haruki Murakami is a genius. He is the master of
telling a story and is the best in his genre -
whatever that may be. The six stories in this gem of a
book revolve around people's lives before and after
the Earthquake that shook Kobe in 1995. The Psychological shock and collective grief are
beautifully depicted through Murakami's words and
prose. An electronic salesman rethinks and knows
himself after his wife disappears one day - and he has
to deliver a package. A Giant frog visits a Bank
employee seeking help to save the World. A man builds
bonfires to live and relive his life over and over
again. Such stories and more are what make this book a
true genius. I may be biased towards Murakami but he is the best!!
These stories in the true sense portray everything
that humans have to offer. From love to loneliness to
jeaulosy to tragic. "Honey Pie" is probably my favorite piece of the
collection. "There's at least one good thing to tell
about even the most ordinary bear," Junpei tells the
little girl who is listening to his tale of the two
bears. This fairy tale and the main story are
interwoven in such a way that we become the little
child listening to the narrator as we read. Of all the
pieces, it is the one that, I think, most perfectly
captures the delicate balance in the relationship
between the self and the world. As the author writes,
it is "about people who dream and wait for the night
to end, who long for the light so they can hold the
ones they love." A great great read!!
Rating: 
Summary: Quirky and absorbing-quintessential Murakami
Review: Haruki Murakami's work sets the standard for the surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness genre of literature. He is best know for large, well crafted yet minimalist surrealistic stories mostly set in modern day Japan. His stories are populated by idiosyncratic, eccentric characters beset and buffeted by strange, overpowering circumstances. This book marks a significant departure in terms of prose style. After the Quake is a slim, stylistically contained series of short stories. There is a very basic-and very weak-underlying theme, the Kobe Earthquake of the early nineties, which is mentioned in each tale but hardly forms the basis of the stories. Basically, this is a series of tales of alienation and anomie that are exacerbated and/or mitigated by the events of the earthquake-that is, the quake is a catalyst, not a protagonist within the stories. Beyond those considerations, this is classic Murakami. The characters remain idiosyncratic and eccentric, the plot lines surrealistic, nearly hypnotic, yet absorbing, the circumstances besetting and buffeting the characters still overwhelming. I wouldn't have thought Murakami would be an effective short story writer-his style in almost all aspects argues against it. I was wrong. This is a truly gifted writer, as he amply demonstrates once again with After the Quake.
Rating:
Summary: the finest writer in the wolrd today...
Review: In his most conventional work to date Murakami draws upon the 1995 Kobe earthquake as the influence for this collection of short stories. All are set in the month after the quake although the disaster itself is never a major feature, it merely lingers in the background or is referred to in passing. What is important here is not the earthquake itself but the effect it has, directly or otherwise, on the diverse characters in this collection. There is Komura, the hi-fi salesman whose wife leaves him after a week glued to the TV coverage of the disaster because living with him is like 'living with a chunk of air'. Or Yoshiya, who follows a complete stranger home one night believing him to be his biological father, eager to prove that he is not the Son of God as his mother keeps insisting. Or, in a typical Murakami piece of bizarre fiction, the six foot frog intent on saving Tokyo from a monster worm. Long-time fans of Murakami may find these stories a little too conventional but what we have here is a master storyteller at the height of his skills. The book is full of his trademark touches; the wife who goes missing, characters with an encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz and the occasional cat all make an appearance. The highlight of the collection is the final story Honey Pie. A subtly drawn love-triangle develops over many years with some beautiful passages of writing and a truly moving ending, it has more than a passing resemblance to Murakami's finest novel Norwegian Wood. While the world waits for Murakami's next novel these stories are a more than worthy stop-gap and serve as a wonderful introduction to one of the world's leading writers. Once again thanks to the excellent translation from Jay Rubin.
Rating:
Summary: Six jewels of the style
Review: It seems a shame that the two points that stood out most to me about After the Quake are so trivial. But I've read a lot of Haruki Murakami works lately, and some things just stand out more than others. The first, which other reviewers has pointed out, is that the Kobe earthquake is almost entirely absent. In most of the stories it is only mentioned once, and very briefly. These six stories are not, in any way, actually about the quake. There's probably some symbolism there, but I never notice such things. The other point is that Murakami is writing in the third person here, instead of his usual first person perspective. See, I told you they were trivial points, but that's what I noticed. On a more important side, Murakami has written six good tales that quickly and deeply move us into six people's lives. Despite their shortness, we get to follow along as each of the main characters learns, at least in an unconscious way, something deep about themselves. Many of the stories are seemingly ordinary, yet profound in some way. The obvious exception is Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, in which a bank collections clerk joins a giant frog to prevent a giant worm, awakened by the Kobe quake, from starting a Tokyo quake out of anger and being awoken. Whether it's a comment on my literary maturity or not, that one was my favorite. But I think there's something here for anyone who likes Murakami's style.
Rating: 
Summary: Try, try again.
Review: Murakami has a magic formula that seems to charm both critics and casual readers. It goes something like this: 1) Create a thoughtful and somewhat remote narrator/main character - someone who has gone through trauma and gained an almost Zen-like calm as a result.
2) Project this character into a world that features either serendipidous events or outlandish occurances, which the character, in his (always his) detached state, simply accepts as normal day-to-day occurances.
3) End the story without any resolution, but with lots of pseudo-deep cant like "You think your journey is over but really it's just begun." This worked well for "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle." It worked well for "Norweigian Wood." Unfortunately, it didn't work for "Sputnik Sweetheart", and, at this late an iteration, just seems tired. Gone is the Murakami whose books seemed like novel-length haikus. His gift was the ability to crystallize emotion with a minimalist style that makes even the most stripped-down Western prose seem florid. The new Murakami of "After the Quake" just seems burnt out. We don't get minimal description because he is able to pluck just the right phrase out of the ether - we get it because he seems tired of trying. Perhaps I am merely a shallow reader and cannot see how this is merely a stylistic interpretation of the Japanese sense of angst in post-Kobe Earthquake life, but - barring any sudden ability to gain insight into the Nihonjin psyche - it feels insubstantial rather than precise.
Rating:
Summary: Stimulating
Review: Murakami weaves many tales in this collection of short stories, and in Murakami fashion, leaves you scratching your head contemplating the truth in each one. Murakami has human emotion nailed and you feel as though each character is real.
If you have never read Murakami, this book is an excellent launching pad. I you are already a fan, the only disappointment will be that the book is so short.
Everyone should read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Real and surreal stories with unclear plots and themes
Review: The book is short, a mere 181 pages long. The six stories are short too. And they all left me with an uneasy feeling. I'm sure that was the author's intention. After all, each one takes plays in 1995, in the weeks after the Kobe earthquake. None of the stories are about the earthquake itself though. Rather, they all use it as a distant backdrop to develop memorable characters, each coming to terms with the concept of the earth shaking under their feet. The stories are both real and surreal. The people in them are troubled. Some have allegorical stories within. And all have fully developed characters. There's a man who tries to understand why his former wife says he has nothing inside himself. There's a humanized frog who convinces a man that they have to save Tokyo from another earthquake. There's a woman who travels to Thailand and learns to deal with the fact of her own mortality. There are three friends who must come to terms with their strange love triangle which has gone on for many years. There's a man who loves to build bonfires. All of the themes seem a bit out of focus, like something is going on that I can't quite grasp. Clearly, the author is talented. However the stories ended too abruptly for my taste. And, after each I had the same thought. "What was THAT about?"
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