The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant Vanishes/Haruki Murakami 327 pgs.

This collection of Murakami's short stories is impressive. I listened to this in audio and a different voice reads each story which helped me differentiate and remember them more easily. Many of the stories have a surreal quality and even though some of them feel very mundane...for example the story about the college kid who mows lawns, others are more fantastic...for example the story the book is named for about a town's elephant that disappears and maybe because it has shrunk. There is also another elephant themed story that includes a dancing dwarf so quite a few interesting items. Oh yes, also a story about a married couple who wake up hungry in the middle of the night and decide to rob a bakery...when they can't find one, they end up robbing a MacDonald's instead insisting on a take of 30 prepared Big Macs. Quite funny. Murakami is widely considered a "great" and this collection gives you a good idea why.