Chronicle and personal epic. A major work by this leading Japanese contemporary writer. 607 pages of an individuals journey in detail, vaguely chronological, as this is a work of imagination, emotion, violence, philosophy and surreal/dream/ghostly journeying through crisis.
Toro Okada is the first person narrator and protagonist. He lives a very normal life in suburban Tokyo, with his wife Kumiko, sister of the powerful and strange Noboru Wataya. They are introduced by her family to Mr Honda deaf psychic and war veteran, in a comic first meeting. Then their cat disappears…
Another disappearance and a festering dislike are the starting points for an increasingly disparate narrative. An abandoned neighbouring house and a young neighbour, May Kasahara, haunt and challenge Toro. His life becomes a lonely search to solve a puzzle which becomes larger and more complex and irrational. His journey becomes unreal.
That’s enough narrative! The reader like Toru becomes surrounded by separate stories which Murakami keeps developing, switching from one to the other, keeping the tension and mystery drawing you on. There is much to take in, a lot of risks are being taken, thankfully the story telling and descriptions are more than equal to it.
I think it would be inadequate to call this book just a mystery, or fantasy. The novel deals with big themes of loneliness, loss and desire, individuality versus conformity. Duality and pairs feature, especially in Matla and Creta Kano and Nutmeg and Cinnamon Alaska. Power and control personal, political and criminal loom. History, in the very powerful memoirs from Japanese involvement in Manchuria, is faced. Big questions about identity, self, others, fate and prediction are explored. Reality versus the power of imagination and the role of unreality and dream are extensively explored. How do our minds work, where do we go in there, how do we get there?
A normal, passive even, main character engages in feats of free thought, fights for an escape from conformity is challenged by the forms of life in his own odyssey. Read this for a roller coaster ride not of fantasy, but of life!
Mark's Reviews 