Bumpers are for denting — Birthday Girl by Murakami

The book opens by taking us into the world of the protagonist who has to work on her twentieth birthday as a waitress at an Italian restaurant. She isn’t disappointed though, because she has just broken off with her boyfriend and doesn’t have anything else to do.

It starts off with the description and the routine of the waiters, the floor manager, the cash register lady and the manager. When Murakami talks about the daily routine of delivering dinner to the hotel owner, you sense some foreshadowing that this routine is about to be broken.

“It was strictly his job to deliver the owner’s dinner to him. None of the other employees knew what he looked like.”

You then read about the waiters eating before the restaurant opened so that they don’t have grumbly stomachs later. Almost a paragraph later we find that the manager is the one with a stomach upset. He is taken to the hospital and leaves the protagonist in charge of delivering the food.

Room 604. Murakami builds a sense of mystery. I almost expected an other-worldy creature or a surreal room up there. Murakami delivers by presenting with a very regular, thin and old character but a very mysterious personality. He appears alien not in his appearance but in his reactions — slow and unusual.

“Happy birthday,” he said. “May you live a rich and fruitful life, and may there be nothing to cast dark shadows on it.”

When he realises it’s her birthday, he asks her to make a wish. While she is speculating, we wonder what we would have wished for, had we been in her place. The wish is never revealed, and is left as an open ended mystery - left to interpretation by the readers. What we do know is that she did not wish for something materialistic or physical, but something that would manifest over time. Or did she not make any wish at all?

“No no,” the old man said, raising his hands and waving them like flags. “There’s nothing wrong with it, not at all. It’s just a little surprising, miss. Don’t you have something else? Like, say, you want to be prettier, or smarter, or rich? You’re okay with not wishing for something like that — something an ordinary girl would ask for?”

“I still don’t really know what life is all about. I don’t know how it works.“

The books also reflects on regrets. Do we wish for the same things when we are 20 and when we are 40? Is she happy with her life now? The books leaves us with so many questions. It is a very short read but leaves your mind twisted.

It also leaves us with these two lines to ponder on -

‘Bumpers are for denting’

‘No matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves.’

The book ends with the protagonist asking the narrator to make a wish. When she fails to do so, the protagonist says — “That’s because you’ve already made your wish”. Perhaps there was nothing more the narrator wanted from life, because she had made her own dreams come true. Or perhaps the universe had granted her wishes for her. Perhaps there was a magical force overlooking her wishes. We will never know, and we will be left to wonder.