Get someone who knows the source language

My guy... I get it, translations are tough but...
How did you mispronounce Erika? You've really never heard that name before?
"EreEEka", and other names as well as places in HarUUUki Murakami's Men with Women are horrendously butchered by the narrator. It was funny to begin with, and annoying by the end.

As for the book, kind feels a lot more like the outdated sexism is the author's actual opinion than simply that of the characters. That pulled me out of taking the story as seriously as I could.

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Absorbing

I’m a big fan of Murakami and thought this collection of stories was really enjoyable. I listened to it walking to work and found myself completely absorbed, unwilling to turn it off. As I’ve said in previous reviews of his work, there is something I really love about Hurakami’s writing. I find it absorbing, almost hypnotic. I found myself drawn deep into every story. I liked that I had no expectations for the story, they all took me by surprise and ended somewhere I never expected, full of odd turns. My favourite story was Sansa In Love. This is such a funny, weird and brilliant story, it stopped me in my tracks and I couldn’t stop laughing. Pure genius. I have to say the title story is the weakest in the collection. I loved the premise but found it rambled a lot and didn’t work. Men Without Men is very good and I’d recommend it.

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4 people found this helpful

Truly engaging stories, beautifully narrated

Truly engaging stories, beautifully narrated. My first short-stories Audible and will be looking out for more.

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Overall fun

My first Murakami book. It left me with the impression that the author is interested in heterosexual men romantic loneliness, and women having multiple sexual partners. As I have no way to draw comparisons with other Murakami audiobooks, I think the performance was good as it was neutral and allowed me to fill the emotional blanks.

About the stories themselves, Murakami's narrative is always interesting and agile, and there's a couple of stories that will stay with me. Overall an interesting book to accompany your daily activities.

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Lovely stories about men without women.

Made me feel sad and nostalgic, scared and admiring to all the women and men in the world.

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Bad narration

there's something about the narrator that iabvery annoying, I try to imagine the Japanese characters but the pitch and accent from the narrator ruined the whole experience.

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4 people found this helpful

7 stories... 4 excellent, 3 merely good

As with most collections of short stories, some are better others, but overall the quality is really high. My personal favourite is the one about the bar owner. Very good narration too, pacing and intonation are spot on.

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3 people found this helpful

Culturally interesting, slightly offbeat stories

I found the Japanese context quite interesting but ultimately the stories were a bit monolithic and somewhat odd. There's also a sense of the stories ending abruptly, perhaps because the author had run out of steam on that idea. Not really an attention grabber, I was quite keen to get to the end of this audio book.

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1 person found this helpful

Brilliant collection and fantastic narration.

I have listed to this collection many tines and continue to come back filled with excited anticipation.

The author is master and the narrator is fantastic.

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Free credit worthy.

Now I enjoyed the stories as I felt that some of them revisited characters in 1Q84, the wind up bird chronicles and killing commendatore or Kafka on the shore. The narrator however ruined the whole book for me. He read the story so slowly, several times I picked up my phone to make sure it was still on and playing. If the story was read by an enthusiastic narrator you could easily shave an hour off the total running time.
This is definitely one to be missed in Audible format. Buy the book and get Alexa to read it to you.

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3 people found this helpful