One rainy Tokyo night, a waitress's uneventful twentieth birthday takes a strange and fateful turn when she's asked to deliver dinner to the restaurant's reclusive owner. Birthday Girl is a beguiling, exquisitely satisfying taste of master storytelling, published to celebrate Murakami's 70th birthday.
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[SHE WAITED ON tables, as usual, that day, her twentieth birthday]***
(Vintage Digital, 24 January 2019, 48 pages, ebook, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I'm a huge fan of Murakami and have read a decent amount of his books. What I love about his work is that I always get a sense that something unpleasant is lurking beneath everything. I've never read this story before but apparently it's part of his Birthday Stories collection. I need to check out the collection to read the other stories. This is a single story and I read it in about 10 minutes. I enjoyed it and was disappointed when it ended. Like other work by Murakami, Birthday Girl is strange and a bit surreal at times. What are the real intentions of the strange old man who is the owner of the restaurant? Is he telling the waitress the truth? This is an excellent little story.
