(First, a disclaimer that I am battling a nasty flu right now. Feel free to take this review as the inane ramblings of a sick man.)

I worked through this anthology in sporadic bursts of dread over the past week, which feels about right to me (at least in terms of how I think Murakami would have wanted us to read it).

That said, I can’t really place a pin as squarely on any one story that I particularly enjoyed compared to the others .

Surface-level impressions do lead me to believe that the amorphous John Doe focalising many of Murakami’s tales in this collection is a deeply conflicted, confused and tortured individual alienated from the meaningless humdrum of the Tokyo metropolis.

In fact, the visions evoked in some of the bleaker tales within The Elephant Vanishes stir up the concerning, decrepit imagery akin to Gibson’s Neuromancer. Maybe an analogue that hits closer to home would be Otomo’s Akira.

Nonetheless, Murakami’s narrators submit to the role they have been tasked to play as the powerless, self-loathing urbanite, always confined to viewing the exposition, climax and denouement of the stories of others, but cursed to remain in Murakami’s twisted creations long after he has forgotten about them.

In a word, I would say The Elephant Vanishes calls to the primal fear of abandonment that cripples the best of our kind. Specifically, the pain of creations forgotten by their creator.

Despite everything I’ve typed here, I really did enjoy this anthology. If I had to point to one through-line that I appreciated, it would have to be Murakami’s take on magic realism. It has (at least to me), never felt more raw, yet intentional. Almost as if the stream-of-consciousness ramblings that permeate many of his short stories here are the fruits of decades of pruning, refinement and effort.

Kudos to you Mr Haruki Murakami sir.

Godspeed.