I read After the Quake for two reading challenges: the 1% Well-Read Challenge and the Japanese Literature Challenge.

After the Quake is a series of six short stories with one common element – they all take place after an earthquake in Kobe, Japan. I had high hopes for the collection, as I’m still quite smitten with Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. Yet I found the stories in this offering dull and the characters flat – with one exception.

In “Landscape with Flatiron”, Murakami develops a character who cannot sleep with a refrigerator in her house for fear she will die in it. She describes her nightmare.

I’m in this tight space, in total darkness, and I die little by little. It might not be so bad if I could just suffocate. But it doesn’t work that way. A tiny bit of air manages to get in through some crack, so it takes a really long time. I scream, but nobody can hear me. And nobody notices I’m missing. It’s so cramped in there, I can’t move. I squirm and I squirm but the door won’t open.

The other five stories have bizarre happenings or characters, but just didn’t work. For example, in “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo”, a frog visits a man in his dreams and tells him how he must fight a worm to save Tokyo from destruction. Within the 24-page dream-like sequences, I did not care if the frog defeated the worm or if the man having the dreams ever awoke. The entire story fell flat.

Though I’m disappointed in this particular work, I will continue to read Haruki Murakami’s other books. No one – even Murakami – can win them all.