Quote:
Originally Posted by Sybarite
Having now finished it, I think that Bjorn's review is excellent.
I'd add that Murakami himself has said of the book: "Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction, the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader."
So in other words, it becomes a mirror held up to the life of the reader: what it divulges depends, in part at least, on the experiences of the individual holding the book.
There are unanswered questions in the novel that don't feel answerable in this way – not least the entire issue surrounding the Johnnie Walker character: why?
But I can't remember a book that has driven me to finish it in such a way. And I cannot remember such an intensely emotional response to characters and their respective fates as with this book. Extraordinary.
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Have you read anything else by him?
Again, as I mention above . . . I'd recommend his earlier work. Especially
Dance Dance Dance; The Wild Sheep Chase; and
Norwegian Wood. The last in that list is probably the most "traditional" and least "Murakamish" of all his novels. But I love it just as much . . .