Well, this was impressive.
I have read one other Haruki Murakami novel some years ago, that being Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and while I really enjoyed that book, this one I loved. And besides, I can feel echoes of that one in this one, and those kind of connections bring me great joy, whether I am projecting them or not.
What to even say about this book? What to say about Haruki Murakami? His works have the interestingly dichotomous ability to mix feelings of the small and the large, the personal and the sweeping, the banal and the mystical. Often while reading I'll find myself thinking... "What the f***?" And I can answer this only with the mantra: "No idea, it's Murakami." Some people maybe can't get behind that and still enjoy the novel, but I love it. The bizarre occurs without explanation, and the dreamlike is commonplace. He leads you from one question to the next so effectively that even when you don't circle back around for the answers, you're having too much fun to mind.
And Murakami's sheer skill... His prose is excellent by default, and ranges into the beautiful. He paints a vivid picture without being overly descriptive, and he allows you to sink into a sort of flavor of a mood. There seems to be a very human understanding that bleeds through onto the page, and not just in his prose but in his character work. He taps into the heart of things, and reminds you why life's simple pleasures are pleasures in the first place. This is a man who seems to truly live, a man who knows how to take his loves and interests and inject them into a story that sticks with you.
Kafka on the Shore is at its heart the inexorable, tidal pulling of two disparate storylines. That of Kafka Tamura, 15-year-old runaway haunted by a dark prophecy, and that of Satoru Nakata, an old man who suffered a childhood affliction that left him... different. How these two stories interact and interweave will leave you feeling like you're reading a riddle at times. Thematically he is playing with dreams, imagination, and responsibility. The darkness of the human subconscious. Ghosts. Memory. Time. Libraries.... Honestly, I find the book hard to capture in words, futile devices that they are. There were sections of it where I even doubted the reality of what I was reading. I mean, my favorite character in the book was probably Colonel Sanders. Do with that what you will.
So much of this story takes place in that dark, ethereal labyrinth of your mind that it feels like you can only accurately explain half of it. And that second, unexplainable half is where the true magic lies. Which is, I believe, why I'm so drawn to his stories; they leave much to the imagination, and there is plenty leftover to ponder. Nothing is so tantalizing as the unknown, and Murakami understands that deeply. But as strange as the novel is at times, it really is beautiful. Emotionally effective, to say the least. I want to use the word gorgeous, even. The character work feels genuine, borderline romanticized. And the entire work is so intricately interwoven that it feels like the kind of thing you could jump right back into when you finish, which may have even been Murakami's intention.
If you can't tell by the unfiltered praise, I loved this book. It belongs on my favorites shelf, I think. I don't think it's for everyone. It was overtly sexual in a way that caught me off guard, and in a way that I can imagine will make some readers uncomfortable. There are also scenes of overt, sometimes shocking, violence. But I don't fault Murakami for exploring the dark recesses of the human experience, or of stories in general. In fact, I think it would feel strange were those areas of darkness missing.
Having just finished, I have that same sort of melancholic regret that I sometimes have when I finish a Ghibli movie; a long journey well-ended, characters coming full-circle with lessons learned, a strange new world that I want to stay in a little while longer. Needless to say, I'll be reading more of his work.
"Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there."
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Popular Highlights in this book
“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”Highlighted by 4,590 Kindle readers- “Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”Highlighted by 3,450 Kindle readers
- “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”Highlighted by 2,847 Kindle readers
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Top reviews from other countries
José Zepeda
Una excelente obra narrativa de Murakami
Reviewed in Mexico on May 18, 2021
José Zepeda
Reviewed in Mexico on May 18, 2021
Es una historia única, siendo un seguidor de Murakami y habiendo leído casi toda su bibliografía, me atrevo a decir que es una de sus novelas más imaginativas y variadas. A pesar del toque realista y nostálgico usual que se halla en sus obras, esta posee también algo que la hace ir más allá de lo que uno está acostumbrado normalmente del autor.
Lo compré a pesar de que mi lengua materna es el español (y la obra está en inglés), sin embargo, a diferencia de Killing Commendatore (La Muerte del Comendador), encontré la prosa de esta novela más amable y más sencilla de interpretar, por no decir concisa y menos ambigua. Me encantó! En definitiva es una de mis obras favoritas del autor, aunque si uno viene buscando algo romántico como Norwegian Wood, no creo que esta obra sea el lugar más adecuado para comenzar. Es más, esta me parece incluso mejor para refrescarse de lo habitual en las obras del autor. Excelente libro.
About the product: the book came just perfect, although it suprised me that it wasn't covered in plastic. The book was just as you see in the picture inside the shipping bag. Excelent edition. Although paperback, the pages are not as thin as in other books, which gives it a great and more uniform density, since it's less likely for it to become damaged.
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