Men Without Women

Written By Linda Malek
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Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
Reviewed by Linda
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When I started reading this book I was in the mood to be fully captivated.

It’s not everyday you read a story written about men coping with loneliness as a result of losing important women in their respective lives.

But this book isn’t as black and white as the title suggests - instead Murakami introspectively examines grief, rejection and heartbreak.

Murakami does well to pick examples of men from all walks of life, though I don’t agree that all men revel in sheer despair or even to the point of starvation at the feeling of unrequited love. Whatever the emotion however, Murakami captures it perfectly even if I was rolling my eyes at some levels of desperation. Ultimately Murakami writes about men in a society where it’s clear that having a woman by a man’s side is a sign of fulfilment.

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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