As an enjoyer of surrealist art and literature, I highly enjoyed reading the Kawakami story, Mysterious Deaths. I loved the distinct characterizations of both the narrator and Kanae, and the mischief they casually got into together. Often times, the story would have me doubling back to make sure that I had read something correctly--the loose structure and borderline chronological insignificance is something I would love to see American authors experiment with more. I thought that certain phrases seemed to remain as faithful as possible to the original, reading a little clumsily, and yet other phrases and lines of dialogue seemed to read as if they were originally written in English. For the most part, Goosen seems to stick to a relatively faithful adaptation of the original text while making sure the characterization is as comprehensible as possible in English.
Murakami's story seemed less character focused--though told through the lens of Creta Kano throughout, it maintained the short and concise writing style focused on external events as seems consistent throughout Murakami's other works. In short, the characters have things happen to them, and they react. Any growth we get is reactive, not proactive. This seems both appropriate and a little ironic; in a story about the brutalization of women written to highlight the struggles associated with womanhood, Murakami seems to remove much decision making and autonomy from the main character--something that I assume the translator has preserved well.
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