there should be a legal defense for young women who attempt gruesome crimes upon the gross older men who think they're in a mutually romantic relationship with them.especially if you can tell they're thinking about sex in a really weird way.i would never convict yamasaki in a court of law.this book, though, is guilty of the crime that is literary sex scenes...i will never recover from some of these descriptions.i expected this book to have some serious self-awareness, and while i think it is str...

This book is a pyschothriller splatterfest."Audition" tells the story of a documentary filmmaker seven years after the passing of his wife. His best friend and son want to help him move on and find happiness with someone new. They concoct a plan to hold auditions for a fake movie to interview the female lead as a potential girlfriend/second wife.What could possibly go wrong with this plan?Yes, the setup for this book is ridiculous and has no literary value. That being said, the plot is well-pace...

”Nice person, bad person--that’s not the level this girl is at. I can see you’re crazy about her and probably won’t be able to hear this, Ao-chan, but I think you’d be better off staying away from someone like her. I can’t read her exactly, but I can tell you she’s either a saint or a monster. Maybe both extremes at once, but not somewhere in between.”Aoyama never remarried after losing his wife to illness. He decided to raise his son by himself, but now seven years later, his son Shige is encou...

A brief warning, I will not be discussing the actual events of the novel (at least without a spoiler tag) other than a general plot description, but it is impossible to discuss this book without some spoilers in terms of tone. If you want to know nothing going in, consider yourself warned. Dear reader, please while reading the following paragraph, imagine it in the cheesiest movie trailer voice you can. Thank you.You’ve laughed at Sleepless in Seattle, you were charmed by When Harry Met Sally an...

Murakami doesn't believe in boundaries, so if you expect an author to pull his punches, keep on moving past Audition. From maybe the tenth page forward, it's clear that no good will come of the obsession Aoyama, a Tokyo-based, widowed documentary film-maker and father to Shige, his teen son, develops for Yamasaki, the lovely, elegant and single former-ballet dancer with a troubled childhood. The elaborate set-up of fake auditions Aoyama and his best friend, Yoshikawa devise seems to forecast tha...

This is a feminist splatter novel written by a male author from the perspective of a misogynistic protagonist - and boy, does this text kick ass! Our main character Aoyama, a widower who works as a documentary film maker, is searching for a new wife, and his buddy comes up with a plan to stage a movie casting which, you guessed it, actually serves as a means to check out potential wives. Aoyama chooses Asami, a former ballerina, and becomes obsessed with her, projecting all of his ideas of a per...

"Audicija" je moj prvi susret sa "drugim Murakamijem". Pre nego što išta drugo napišem red je da odmah kažem kako volim savremenu japansku književnost i kako me možda to čini manje objektivnim od drugih...Ali, evo, pokušaću da obrazložim ovih pet zvezdica...1. AtmosferaOno što je zajedničko i jednom i drugom Murakamiju jeste stvaranje odlične atmosfere - atmosfere u kojoj je sve moguće. Čak i ono što vizualno podseća na realnu stvarnost može da sklizne u mračniju nijansu iz koje može da vreba ne...

When I was in my teens and twenties, you could put me in a room of 1000 men and I would undoubtedly gravitate toward the most damaged ones. I guess Aoyama and I have that in common.The gist of the story is this: Aoyama is a widower who has decided it is time to remarry. Enlisting the help of a filmmaker friend, he holds an audition to find his future wife by duping women into thinking they are auditioning for a film. Out of over a thousand applicants, Aoyama narrows the pool down to a small grou...

Ya know, just the the other day I was walking down the street, thinking to myself, why is it so dang hard to meet nice women these days? Wouldn't it be cool to meet a decent girl for a change? One who isn't a total ditz or narcissist, just someone to cuddle and read books with, a girl who's sweet and kind and doesn't insist on cutting off my feet? That's when I got the idea to hold an audition for the role of my perfect mate, figuring this would be the surest way to find exactly what I was looki...

Ryū Murakami's Audition is a short novel which you can easily read in one or two sittings - and unfortunately probably forget just as quickly; ultimately, the book consists of a long and relatelively uneventful buildup to a sudden and quick climax, which is over almost as soon as it started.Audition is the story of Aoyama, a middle-aged widower of seven years, urged by his teenage son to remarry; the idea is shared by his best friend, Yoshikawa, with whom Aoyama produced documentaries for Tokyo ...