Jeff’s Reviews > A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing > Status Update

"Keepers": 5/5 - refreshing and surprising, this story was arranged perfectly at the end of the collection, giving readers a lot of the strengths of earlier stories, with an important variation. Also, a nice "bookend" (no pun intended) to the titular Fly Fishing.

But beneath the frustration was an increasing undertow of worry.

"The Foreigner": 3/5 - very atmospheric, very Murakami's Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, great tension and a fair plot resolution, but thematically, kind of a 6th Sense ending.

If Haruki Murakami wrote The Sun Also Rises...

"Diamondback Mountain": 3/5 - a short-lived ski romance.

Meditations on lust.

"Scrimshaw": 3/5 - a very well-written story, convincing and immersive, but with the texture of memory foam, only given definition by the reader's preconceptions.

"Six Feet under the Prairie": 5/5 - a young man in Colorado takes a construction job for the summer that ends up changing his life. Powerful symbolism, powerful thematically, awe-inspiring description.

"The Money Pill": 4/5 - maybe it's like, red pill, blue pill, black pill, money pill? I missed something here and it's probably just me. Definitely a powerful story. Authentic and bewildering, something like your first time reading The Sun Also Rises.