AFTER THE QUAKE BOOK REVIEW

After the Quake is a collection of stories by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin (Knopf, $21.00
By Heidi Johnson-Wright

Life can make us ignorant of ourselves, if we let it. The banalities of daily routines and schedules, the obligations of work and family can numb us, turning us into proverbial rats in a maze with little ability or desire to seek self-enlightenment. And thus, the same old neuroses and inner struggles play out with the same, tired outcomes.

Yet sometimes what seems to threaten us can save us. A spouse leaves, an unhealthy relationship ends, an unnerving encounter with a stranger shakes us out of our emotional slumber, and we catch a glimpse of how to better nurture ourselves and heal old wounds.

In After the Quake, a collection of a half-dozen masterfully-written short stories by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, the characters find themselves thrust into odd, precarious situations that force them to act instead of simply reacting. A man’s wife leaves him and he must look to himself to fathom why. A young man’s search for his real father becomes a search for himself. A milquetoast bank employee living a deadly-dull life gets a visit from a giant frog and a chance to save all of Tokyo.

While each story can stand splendidly on its own, all are connected by the same thread of the 1995 devastating earthquake in Kobe, Japan. Interestingly, the majority of the characters do not live in Kobe nor face the disaster first-hand. It’s the TV images, the newspaper headlines and the sadness hanging over Japan that jolts their hearts and psyches, something that Americans in this post-9/11 world can surely relate to.

In UFO in Kushiro, an outwardly successful electronics salesman finds his wife has abruptly left him with little more than memories and a note that says living with him was like “living with a chunk of air.” Clueless about what to do next, he takes a vacation centered around couriering a mystery package to another city for a friend.

Yoshiya, the protagonist in All God’s Children Can Dance, has a conflicted, quasi-incestuous relationship with his religious fanatic mother, and no idea who his father is. Like most children, he has hopes for happiness by making a deal with God.

“All he had ever prayed for was the ability to catch outfield flies, in answer to which God had bestowed upon him a penis that was bigger than anybody else’s. What kind of world came up with such idiotic bargains?”

As an adult, he self-medicates with booze, barely holds onto a job and muddles through until he gets a solid clue about his paternity. He later learns that perhaps he was searching for something else all along.

“Animals lurked in the forest like tromp l’oeil figures, some of them horrific beasts he had never seen before. He would eventually have to pass through the forest, but he felt no fear. Of course – the forest was inside him, he knew, and it made him who he was. The beasts were ones that he himself possessed.”

In the humorous yet poignant Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, an unremarkable loan collections officer with a potbelly, flat feet and no social life comes home to find a giant talking frog in his apartment.

“’Yes, of course, as you can see. A real frog is exactly what I am. A product neither of metaphor nor allusion nor deconstruction nor sampling nor any other such complex process, I am a genuine frog. Shall I croak for you?’”

Far from threatening, the frog is polite, well-spoken, quotes Nietzsche, is partial to Hemingway and Dostoevsky and makes a mean pot of green tea. The frog gives his newly-made nerd friend an opportunity to play a pivotal role in a tongue-in-cheek Godzilla vs. Megalon-like battle to save all of Tokyo from mass destruction.

Whether surreal or straight-forward, humorous or heart-breaking, Murakami’s stories hold up and hold together in this wonderfully-compelling collection.

Heidi Johnson-Wright resides in Miami, FL where she treasures the sea, sunshine and Cuban coffee.