If you ever want to know what it feels like to be a writer who loses a contest then reads the winning entry…well, I will tell you that it’s a lot of smiling that feels like swallowing bitterness. Anyway, this contest was a cool idea: write a story in the style of Haruki Murakami using a line from his new bookstop novel 1Q84.

The winning entry, which comes from Kavita Jindal, is an excellent story with the kind of restrained yet entrancing voice that Murakami does so well. Losing sucks. But it’s not so bad when you get to read such a wonderful story as a result.

Writers of all levels would do well to see how the story handles telling and showing, using one to set up the other. It also has a subtle strangeness common to great micro fiction.

Well written is well done.