First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
I did not know what to expect when I picked up First Person Singular. I had heard about Murakami for years. People talked about his surrealism, the talking cats, the wells, the women who disappear. I thought I was ready for something wild and strange.
What I got instead was something much quieter. And somehow, that was harder to shake.
First Person Singular is a short story collection. Eight stories. Most of them are brief. None of them are plot-heavy. What they are is emotionally odd in a way that stays with you even after you close the book and go about your day.
If you have never read Murakami before, this is actually a good place to start. The stories are short enough to sample his world without jumping straight into one of his long novels. You can get a feel for his voice, his mood, his obsessions without spending weeks inside one book. And if the collection clicks for you, there is a whole world of his longer work waiting.
But do not go in expecting neat stories with satisfying endings. Go in expecting to feel something you cannot quite name.
A Literary Gallery of Memory
The thing that surprised me most about this collection was how little actually happens in each story.
A man remembers a woman he knew in college. A man thinks about a poetry anthology he once owned. A man recalls a strange encounter at a bar. That is mostly it. There are no big dramatic events. Nobody is running from anything. Nobody is trying to solve a mystery.
And yet the stories feel full. They feel heavy with something.
Each story works less like a traditional narrative and more like a photograph you find in an old drawer. You are not sure exactly who these people are or what was happening when the picture was taken. But there is something in the image that makes you feel like you almost remember it yourself.
The narrators are not trying to explain their past. They are trying to revisit it. And there is a difference. Explaining would mean they understood it. Revisiting means they are still sitting with it, turning it over, wondering what it all meant.
That is what makes the collection feel personal in a strange way. These stories are not about dramatic events. They are about the small things that quietly follow a person through life. The ones you do not expect to remember, but do.
Music as Emotional Architecture
If there is one thing that holds this collection together more than anything else, it is music.
Jazz. Blues. Vinyl records. Old songs playing in small bars. Music runs through almost every story in the collection like a thread. And Murakami does not use it as background decoration. He uses it as something much more important.
In his world, music does the emotional work that the characters cannot do themselves. When a narrator cannot explain how he feels about a woman or a memory or a moment in his past, he reaches for a song instead. The song says what the person cannot.
There is something very true about that. Most of us have had the experience of hearing an old song and suddenly being thrown back into a moment we had not thought about in years. The memory comes back through the music, not through any effort of our own.
Murakami understands this completely. He builds his stories around that feeling. The music is not just atmosphere. It is the emotional skeleton of the whole thing.
Reading these stories, especially the ones set in bars or small rooms with records playing, you start to feel like you are sitting in those spaces yourself. Late at night. A little bit sad. Not sure why. Just listening.
It is not a comfortable feeling. But it is a very real one.
Aging, Memory, and the First-Person Voice
The title of this collection is not accidental. First Person Singular is deeply interested in what it means to tell your own story. To say “I” and mean it. To claim a memory as yours when you are not even sure you remember it correctly.
The narrators in these stories are older men. They are looking back. And the further back they look, the more uncertain they become about what they actually saw and felt and understood at the time.
There is real vulnerability in that. These are not confident narrators who know who they are and what their lives have meant. They are men who are still figuring it out decades later. They revisit old memories and find them slippery. They remember women they once knew and realize they never really understood those women at all. They look at their younger selves and feel something between tenderness and embarrassment.
The “first person singular” voice creates a kind of closeness with the reader. You are inside someone’s head. You hear their thoughts and doubts and half-formed feelings. But at the same time, you are aware that this voice is unreliable. Memory is unreliable. The narrator is not lying to you, but he might be lying to himself without knowing it.
That gap, between what the narrator thinks he remembers and what might have actually happened, is where Murakami does some of his most interesting work. The stories are haunted not by dramatic secrets but by smaller things. Missed connections. Feelings never named. Things said too late or not at all.
Murakami’s Surrealism Feels Quiet Instead of Loud
If you come to this collection expecting wild, loud surrealism, you might be confused at first.
The strange things in these stories do not announce themselves. They slide in quietly. Reality bends slowly and without warning, and then before you have noticed, you are somewhere slightly outside the ordinary world, and you are not sure exactly when the crossing happened.
A story that starts as a straightforward memory will suddenly include something that should not be possible. A figure appears who cannot be there. Something happens that does not follow the rules of the physical world. And then the story continues, as if nothing unusual has occurred.
That is the thing about Murakami’s surrealism. It does not feel like a special effect. It feels like a natural extension of the emotional state the story is already in. When you are deep enough in memory or loneliness or grief, reality becomes a little porous. Things that should not be there start to appear. That is how it works in life, and that is how it works in these stories.
You are not supposed to solve these moments or explain them. You are not supposed to finish the story and nod and say, “Ah yes, now I understand what that was about.”
You are supposed to just sit inside them. Let the strangeness settle around you. Trust that the feeling is the point, not the explanation.
That takes some adjustment if you are used to fiction that wraps things up neatly. But once you stop reaching for an explanation, the stories open up in a different way.
The Beauty and Discomfort of Murakami’s Women
This is the part of any Murakami conversation that cannot be avoided. And it should not be avoided.
The women in these stories are often beautiful. They are often mysterious. They are often unforgettable. And they are often observed rather than understood.
The male narrators watch them. They remember them in vivid physical detail. They feel things intensely about them. But the women themselves rarely get to speak much. They do not often get to be complicated in the way the narrators are complicated. They exist, in many of these stories, as figures in the narrator’s memory rather than as fully realized people with their own inner lives.
For some readers, this will not be a problem. For others, including many first-time readers, it will be genuinely uncomfortable. There is something in the way these women are described, always a little idealized, always a little out of reach, that starts to feel less like tenderness and more like observation. Like a person looking at a painting rather than talking to another human.
The stories can feel deeply tender one moment and emotionally alienating the next. You will find a passage that moves you, and then find a moment right after it that makes you feel slightly uneasy. That tension does not go away. It is woven into the fabric of the collection.
It would not be honest to write about this book without saying that clearly. Murakami creates emotional worlds that feel true and beautiful. But the women in those worlds are often more symbol than person. That is a real limitation, and readers deserve to go in knowing it is there.
Why the Collection Works Despite Its Imperfections
Here is the strange thing. Even with all of that discomfort, even with the emotional distance, even with the moments that make you raise an eyebrow, the stories still work.
They linger. Long after you close the book, you find yourself thinking about them. A detail from one of the stories surfaces in your mind while you are making coffee or walking somewhere. A particular feeling that one of the narrators described stays with you even though you cannot quite explain why it got to you.
Murakami is very good at creating emotional spaces that stay open after the story ends. He does not close things down. He leaves things unresolved on purpose, and the unresolved quality of the stories is part of what makes them stick.
He also writes in a way that feels simple without actually being simple. The sentences are clear. The language is not showy. But beneath the plainness, there is a lot happening. The emotional complexity is not on the surface. It is underneath, and you feel it without always being able to name what you are feeling.
That might be the best way to describe reading Murakami. You feel something real, something that seems to match an experience you have had or a feeling you have known, but you cannot quite put it into words. And somehow the stories are comfortable with that. They do not need you to name it. They just need you to feel it.
This book is like a stroll through a literary gallery, where each short story is a distinct canvas painted with nostalgia, music, and the enigmatic charm of the elderly narrator.
As a first time reader of Murakami’s work, my initiation into his world was a rollercoaster of appreciation and discomfort.These eight stories offer a glimpse into the mind of an aging writer.
The exploration of past decades, intertwined with the delicate notes of jazz and blues, adds a layer of melancholic beauty to the narratives. Relationships, particularly with women, are portrayed with nuanced tenderness in some tales, yet a discomfort arises as certain stories venture into the realm of objectification, leaving an unsettling impression.
The duality of light and shadow defines Murakami’s literary landscape. Surrealism seamlessly blends with everyday life, creating an atmosphere where reality and fantasy intertwine.
The introduction of an elderly first-person perspective adds a raw and introspective depth, as Murakami grapples with memory, aging, and the transient nature of time.For a first-time encounter with Murakami, “First Person Singular” is a captivating initiation. Its brevity makes it an accessible entry into his unique narrative realm, offering a taste of his thematic richness and stylistic brilliance.
However, the occasional discomfort caused by the portrayal of women casts a shadow over the otherwise enjoyable read.
Is First Person Singular a good starting point for Murakami?
Yes. The short stories offer an easy way into Murakami’s themes, style, and surreal atmosphere without the commitment of a long novel. If you enjoy the collection, his longer books give you much more of the same world.
What is First Person Singular about?
The collection explores memory, aging, loneliness, music, relationships, and the strange emotional spaces between reality and imagination. More than anything, it is about older men looking back at their past and trying to understand what it meant.
Is First Person Singular surreal?
Yes, but quietly. The surreal moments blend into everyday life instead of dominating the stories. You often will not notice the moment when reality shifts.
Why do some readers feel uncomfortable with Murakami’s writing?
Many readers admire his emotional atmosphere and his ability to capture loneliness and memory while also feeling uncomfortable with how women are sometimes written. The women in his stories are often observed and idealized rather than fully realized as complex people.
Do the stories in First Person Singular connect with each other?
Not through plot. But emotionally and thematically, they feel like parts of the same mind. The same obsessions run through all of them. Memory, music, longing, the past that never quite lets go.
