Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Miu is glamorous and successful. Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.
Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.
Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished...
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IN THE SPRING of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. 1
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(@vintagebooks, 10 October 2011, ebook, 242 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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Murakami is one of my favourite writers. I still have a few titles from his back catalogue to read and I just bought his new story collection which I can't wait to read. This was a shorter read than most of his other books I've read and I loved every word of it. The book is narrated by the mysterious K whom we never find out much about, just that he's in love with Sumire, his best friend. K recounts events some time after they've happened, Sumire falling in love with Miu and disappearing and what happens afterwards. The book uses Murakami's trademark, distinctive style and prose and you know something much darker is going on beneath the surface.
