Book Report
I’ve finished reading Kafka on the Shore, the latest novel from Haruki Murakami, and while it isn’t quite the grabber The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was, it’s still, as usual, really good. It’s a bit sexier than usual, and also a bit more brutal, especially about a third of the way in, when some distinctly unpleasant things happen to the cats, a plot element Murakami thankfully dispenses with thereafter. Neither of the two central characters are ever brought into direct contact, which suits the alternating, third-person/first-person narrations, but instead, minor characters are used to thread the story together. The story is a lot more explicitly magical than other Murakami novels, and that’s not something I’m entirely happy about. Although it’s translated from Japanese, what I experience as Murakami’s distinctive style comes through. Whether it’s because of his prose being so readily translated or the translator is so adept, the novel, as usual, manages to be highly worldly, distinctly Japanese, and unique to the environment it creates for itself all at the same time. I’ve read a few other Japanese novels, but Murakami shows how well he’s mastered the form, well beyond anyone else I’ve read yet (although I hear Amy Yamada’s supposed to be good).