You searched for book_author:"Haruki Murakami"
What have I learned from Haruki Murakami’s first two novels, freshly published in an English translation for the first time? Tautologically: Murakami is Murakami. If you’ve read anything else by him, some of his motifs are going to be quite familiar: main character is a young man, somewhat disconnected from the world around him, exploring life through an extended metaphor (in this case, pinball). Other characters are little more than stock; Murakami takes it somewhat…
Are you familiar with the works of John Irving? Then you’ll be familiar with the works of Haruki Murakami—because this is perhaps the antithesis of Irving in many ways. Both authors produce profoundly character-driven novels, often centred on young men trying to find their way through a life clouded by attachments to a deep past. Whereas Irving seems determined to wrap his characters in layers of the complex darkness of the human soul, Murakami instead…
So, yeah, I don't really understand this book.
It is not often that I admit a book has defeated me intellectually; upon the rare occasion that it happens, however, I will admit it. This review is, like any review, a meditation on the unique experience I had reading the book, but it is also ruminations about why I feel that Kafka on the Shore is a mountain whose summit I never reached.
I'm starting to…
Two years ago my friend Vivike gave me Kafka on the Shore for Christmas, assuring me that I would like it—and she was right. I also found it confusing and daunting and knew that, in Haruki Murakami, I had found yet another author whose works I will continue to digest long after I devour them with all the tenacity my love of reading requires. So for this Christmas as I considered which book to inflict…