This collection of 15 stories from a popular Japanese writer, perhaps best known in this country for A Wild Sheep Chase ( LJ 11/15/89), gives a nice idea of his breadth of style. The work maintains the matter-of-fact tone reminiscent of American detective fiction, balancing itself somewhere between the spare realism of Raymond Carver and the surrealism of Kobo Abe. These are not the sort of stories that one thinks of as ``Japanese''; the intentionally Westernized style and well-placed reference to pop culture gives them a contemporary and universal feel. Engaging, thought-provoking, humorous, and slyly profound, these skillful stories will easily appeal to American readers but must present something of a challenge to the Japanese cultural establishment. At their best, however, they serve to dispel cultural stereotypes and reveal a common humanity. Recommended for libraries with an interest in contemporary fiction.-- Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib., N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A popular Japanese novelist who lives in New Jersey but sets his fictions in Japan, Murakami ( A Wild Sheep Chase ) invests everyday events with surreal overtones to create 17 disturbing existential conundrums. Things appear from, and disappear to, alternate levels of reality with frightening ease: A man glimpses an elephant shrinking, and its keeper growing, shortly before the animal vanishes from a suburban Tokyo zoo; a woman tortures a little green monster who crawls out of her garden to propose marriage; while another man watches impassively as three silent, tiny strangers--``TV People''--invade his house, install a TV set and take over his life. Even more strictly earthbound stories have the quality of modern fables, as when a newlywed couple hold up a McDonald's to break the curse that gives them late-night hunger attacks, or when an out-of-work paralegal copes with his angry wife, a flirtatious teenage neighbor and an anonymous woman phone caller who seems to know everything about him. In both his playful throwaway sketches and his darkly comic masterpieces, Murakami has proven himself a virtuoso with a fertile imagination. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

/*STARRED REVIEW*/ Murakami's first U.S-published book of short stories does not quite merit the sort of breathless review Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World received, but it certainly won't hurt his fast-growing reputation. The problem is that the shorter format constrains Murakami's wild but tender imagination: it is the play of opposites, the changes of direction, the breathtaking sleights of hand that make him such a sensational novelist, and the shorter format gives Murakami no room for such often side-splitting devilry. And yet, the conceits behind these stories, though cut short, are quite wonderful: a marriage that breaks up over a Japanese tourist's purchase of lederhosen; an out-of-work legal clerk's troubling day with a woman who wants to have phone sex; a personal, sexy letter sent by a clerk in response to a consumer complaint; a vanishing elephant. Actually, the title piece is perhaps the truest to what we have come to expect from Murakami: a bittersweet piece about how an elephant's literal vanishing upsets the balance of the world. The tender side of Murakami, without which he would be only half the writer he is, comes out "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning"--an exquisite piece that somehow seems the most Japanese of these generally very Westernized stories. It appears at this time that Murakami is one step away from true greatness. A little deepening of his subjects, a little further penetration of his own already wise heart, and Murakami can take his place alongside the handful of the world's true artists. (Reviewed Feb. 1, 1993)0679420576Stuart Whitwell