“Samsa in Love” is a playful reversal of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” Here, Gregor the cockroach wakes up to find he is human, and his first interaction is with a hunchbacked woman who is convinced he is slow and only interested in her for kinky sex. Three of the stories are particularly effective. The parameters of this lack differ, of course, and the degree to which we can sympathize will likewise vary, but the emotional complications of that lack are something most readers will understand and appreciate at a visceral level, even if the tale seems beyond comfortable comprehension.
We come to realize this last element is entirely appropriate precisely because there is no pat answer, no comfortable place, no way to tie up loose ends for the protagonists of these tales who, as the title notes, are missing an important woman. All display elements of Haruki Murakami’s fiction that readers have come to expect: magical realism, the Beatles, cats and jazz, and abrupt endings without easy resolution. Men without Women comprises seven short stories, four of which have appeared in other publications.
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