review

THE KINGDOM THAT FAILED – HARUKI MURAKAMI

By karen t. brissette

Posted on December 26, 2022

The Kingdom That Failed by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3/5 cats
One Star

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.

this is the SEVENTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your annual reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.

GR has deleted the pages for several of the stories i’ve read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. i have tried to restore the ones i could, but my to-do list is already a ball of nightmares, so that’s still a work-in-progress. however, because i don’t have a lot of time to waste, and because my brain has felt scraped clean ever since my bout with covid, i’m not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case GR decides to scrap ’em again.

i am doing my best.
merry merry.

DECEMBER 26

i’ll never stop trying to see what people love about murakami, but for the record – this was the SECOND short story i read today, only for whatever reason, the first one i read is a ghost haunting goodreads, where the powers-that-be have permitted a record of its existence to continue to appear on the site, but no longer allow anyone new to say they have read it nor to review it and they have removed the author’s name (ADAM LEVIN, YOU MONSTERS) from the record so it’s like some half-furnished diorama at a natural history museum AND THE WORST THING IS that i LOVED the story, and even though i seem to be the only person on here who did, i wanted to share MY TWO CENTS about it, as diminished as my critical currency has become of late, and i was not able to share this TWO CENTS and instead had to read a SECOND story to make up for it, by an author who has historically unwowed me, which is two insults, two injuries, and it has been too long and enervating a day to deal with any more math.

read it for yourself here

BUT READ THE FORBIDDEN ADAM LEVIN TEXT HERE:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20…

2022:

DECEMBER 1: PORGEE’S BOAR – JONATHAN CARROLL
DECEMBER 2: SKELETON SONG – SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 3: JUDGE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING MANUSCRIPT – LAVIE TIDHAR
DECEMBER 4: QUANDARY AMINU VS THE BUTTERFLY MAN – RICH LARSON
DECEMBER 5: IN MERCY, RAIN – SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 6: CHOKE – SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA
DECEMBER 7: THIS PLACE IS BEST SHUNNED – DAVID ERIK NELSON
DECEMBER 8: RED PYRAMID – VLADIMIR SOROKIN
DECEMBER 9: HOSPICE/HONEYMOON – JOYCE CAROL OATES
DECEMBER 10: MY FIRST CAR – JOY WILLIAMS
DECEMBER 11: HOW MANY – BRYAN WASHINGTON
DECEMBER 12: KENNY BOND SHOT MY DOG – CHRISSY KOLAYA
DECEMBER 13: I KNOW YOU’RE THERE – PAUL TREMBLAY
DECEMBER 14: THE THERESA JOB – COLSON WHITEHEAD
DECEMBER 15: CATTLE HAUL -JESMYN WARD
DECEMBER 16: I LIKE YOUR SHOES – KEVIN BROCKMEIER
DECEMBER 17: SOME OTHER ANIMAL’S MEAT – EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 18: THE MOM OF BOLD ACTION – GEORGE SAUNDERS
DECEMBER 19: THE WEIGHT – ANNE ENRIGHT
DECEMBER 20: THE FIFTH STEP – STEPHEN KING
DECEMBER 21: OUR LIFE AS THE VOLCANO CULT – KAWAI STRONG WASHBURN
DECEMBER 22: WRONG OBJECT – MONA SIMPSON
DECEMBER 23: 68:HAZARD:COLD – JANELLE SHANE
DECEMBER 24: A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES – DYLAN THOMAS
DECEMBER 25: CATHAY – STEVEN MILLHAUSER