Today just happens to your twentieth birthday, and on top of that you have brought me this wornderful meal’, the old man said as if reconfirming the situation!
(Murakami 12)
Before I begin this review, I want to share a disclaimer. My initial response after Murakami’s Birthday Girl was delivered with two other books wasn’t very well. It wasn’t as per my expectations. I took it as another novel by Murakami, but it turned out to be a short story, extending only to 20 pages. Having spent around 100 bucks on only one short story didn’t seem justified. Moreover, I couldn’t return it.
Hence, it stayed with me.
Title: Birthday Girl
Author: Haruki Murakami
Pages: 21
Publisher: Harvill Secker Vintage (Translated from Japanese in 2002)
Price: 99/- (Ordered on Book Bhandar)
Genre: Short story
To overcome my disappointment, I decided to give it a read. And guess what, I completed it within an hour. The last such book in terms of length was White Nights by Dostoevsky.
Imagine you’re asked to make one wish! What would you include? What would you leave? Is it that simple? Is it that complex?
Reading Birthday Girl gave me a unique feeling. There is nothing much to talk about the book; otherwise, it’ll reveal whatever little mystery it holds. Murakami’s signature style of transporting the readers to another world is evident throughout the story. Much work is to be done by the readers. There is no singular conclusion. It leaves you in a sweet abyss. You think about the possible things and settle on what seems to satiate you the most.
I would want you to just give it a read from whatever sources you find it. Let your imagination guess what that wish would be.
©Shashank
P.S. On my 27th birthday, I read the book once. I kept myself in the protagonist’s situation to see what my wish would be. And I kept it with me.
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