Despite his successes - professional, social and romantic - he is struck suddenly by the lack of meaning in his life and finds himself wondering: 'Who in the world am I?'

The burst of feelings also brings about a dawning awareness of his existential loneliness. Suddenly, along with the unfamiliar feeling of love, there is a terrible dread brought on by the fear of losing her, though he knows that as a married woman with a child she is all but lost to him already. There is nothing exceptional about the woman Tokai falls for, but he falls hard.

Many of these women are themselves often already in committed relationships, which helps to ward off the possibility of anything serious developing, until, of course, it does. Having decided against marriage and family, Tokai instead maintains regular, casual relationships - the occasional dinner, sex and intimate conversation - with multiple women. Successful at work, Tokai is an all-around affable guy, a great conversationalist with a sense of humor, who has 'none of the traits you would associate with an unstable personality.' In other words, he is a man not easily given to strong emotions. Tokai is perfectly content with his superficial life. In the suggestively titled 'An Independent Organ,' a cosmetic plastic surgeon named Dr. Though many years have elapsed since the two broke up, and there had been no contact between them in the interim, the man, now married, considers himself the 'second-loneliest man on the planet,' reserving first place for the woman's husband. will still remain, as a stain, until the day you draw your final breath.' That is the conclusion drawn by the protagonist of the collection's title story, a grown man who learns that a girlfriend from junior high has committed suicide. This ache pulsates through each of the seven stories in Haruki Murakami's newest collection, 'Men Without Women.' In every one, a male protagonist suffers the loss of a woman he loves, or is compelled to recognize that he will never have her in the first place.īut unfulfilled or disappointed romantic longing are just devices in stories whose real subject is a loneliness so profound, it 'seeps deep down inside your body, like a red-wine stain on a pastel carpet,' which, though it 'might fade a bit over time. But while most of us won't die of being alone, many will experience, at some point, the dull, gnawing ache of it.

Men without women novel