This 1992 novella by Haruki Murakami is a small conundrum. On the one hand it’s pulpy story-line does not seem original, but the Murakami style of philosophizing fancifully yet with an humble overtone charmed me. The sequence of events gets unpredictable in the second half of the book and holds the most literary juice.

It is essentially a man’s story of romance in his life, and how he gauges growth in his life by judging the treatment he meted out to the women he was involved with at the time. The story is told from the perpspective of the protagonist Hajime, who is an ordinary fellow with good tastes. He admits to feeling lonely for a large chunk of his life which he attributes to his being an only child, a rarity in those days in Japan. He had only one friend in the six years of his elementary school- Shimamoto, who is also an only child. The two of them are close and spend a considerable amount of time at Shiamamoto’s house listening to their father’s jazz records.

However they switch schools and lose touch despite promising that they would not. Hajime goes on to have a normal high school experience. Shimamoto does not, but we come to know of this later, as the story is now told only trough the real time experience of Hajime.

Longing for a real connection their paths cross once in an almost dramatic fashion, a surreal spy film encounter where neither of them talk, nearly twenty years after they’d last seen each other. Eight years go by and Hajime now owns two jazz bars, when their paths cross again, and this time they meet and talk.

What follows is a look into human conceit, selfishness and subtle pretenses. Since the story is written from the perspective of Hajime, and centers on his experiences for a large part and we are kept in the dark about all the experiences of Shimamoto during the 25 years they hadn’t been in touch with each other; we can’t help but judge Hajime harshly. There are only hints about Shimamoto’s life that point towards misery and sorrow.

Dearth has been symbolized, and separated from humanity almost as if it’s a commodity. But it is the women only who represents death or hold death as an infectious commodity threatening Hajime.