Any other Murakami books? I wasn’t so much a fan of Kafka On The Shore.
Before you hate just know that this is my personal opinion and I do want to give him another try.
Issues with the book for me…
Maybe it’s because I’m familiar with Japanese works all through my life so I find this particular description of surrealism to be something of a novelty technique. I also feel like a lot of loosely conveyed themes and imagery was there for the sake of it and hardly served any narrative progression to both the overall story or to the characters development.
Don’t get me wrong, I love magical realism and dreamy sequences, but from the perspective of this novel in particular; it felt like a sexually charged-guilty fever dream with no payoff or resolution (which if that was the point, it did it well). I love the imagery, I just wished it amounted to something more meaningful.
Also, maybe this is a translation issue, but the overall dialogue wasn’t all that compelling to me either (granted the main character is a 15 year old), but nothing struck me as illuminating or creatively put if that makes any sense. It was written like a modern poem (like that of a middle-aged woman with no literary experience outside of YA fiction who wished she led a more adventurous life).