Murakami Ryu: Coin Locker Babies

[Gem]

In this twisted coming of age tale, two baby boys are left by their mothers at a train station’s coin lockers. They are sent to an orphanage where they are experimented upon and then adopted out into the same family before finally making their way back to Tokyo. One becomes first a prostitute and then a pop star and the other a murderous pole-vaulter. Their goal is simple; revenge on the mothers who abandoned them.

A grim story told in the author’s usual crisp, detached style, Coin Locker Babies adds a heavy dose of surrealism to Murakami’s familiar cocktail of dark and disturbing.

The result is an ultimately flawed novel that suffers from a lack of focus. The central themes of self discovery and loneliness are often put on the back burner in favour of exploring topics as wide sprung as the music industry, sexuality and even biological weapons.

Despite this, it is a gripping read that stimulates thought and finds one wondering whether we have indeed created a society in which incarceration is easier to cope with than freedom. Murakami may not have the finesse of his namesake Haruki, but as a purveyor of ideas and commentator on modern society he is rather excellent.

[Jayaprakash]

This was one I gave up, about 3/4 of the way through, not so much out of disgust as a growing sense of disappointment. The premise - two abandoned orphans seeking vengeance on their mothers annoyed me from the start - there are a couple more guilty parties to be tracked down, wouldn't you say?

Murakami delights in, and is rather good at creating very surreal depictions of urban decay and urban decadence, but it began to feel like a trip from one elaborate set piece to another without sufficient connecting tissue, as it were. While Murakami's imagination works well in a rather visual way, I don't feel he has anything especially of depth or interest to say about the social issues he works into his plot. At least not in this book, or what I read of it.

Despite that, I do have another of his books somewhere in the stack of things to try at some point.