As I typed the heading of this write up, I had a very humbling thought. A man revered for his skills of prose has written a masterpiece and me, an inconspicuous reader ventures to "review it". As a tug of war ensued in my mind I settled for an explanation that my adamant mind proffered. I am merely sharing my interpretation of some aspects of the book and also expressing thoughts that my mind generously gave rise to as it imbibed Mr Murakami's wonderful fictional snow capped mountains and log cabins. And therefore I stand vindicated of the crime of attempting to "review" someones work of sweat and blood while I sit in my boxers comfortably, in an air conditioned room sipping on cold coffee as the author spent hours of imagination and toil in creating something! If I could call this article by any other name other than a review I would, but for the sake of google search and my own vain need to be read I call it a review all the same.
It is a story on the lines of what Mr Murakami excels at - magical realism, a big term for something that simply denotes an equal measure of reality and imagination bordering reality and fantasy. It is a mystical tale set in Japan as all of Mr Murakami's other tales. As in all of his books that I have earlier read, it traverses multiple locations within Japan and has references to literature (Russian authors are his favourite I can now surely say), music, cats and the one most important theme of his works - loneliness. There is nobody like Mr Murakami to show how loneliness, like a drug, feels good and also obliterates. It's deep melancholy is articulated in the subtlest of ways but it's impact on the reader is immense and crushing!And the setting of the majority of the book does little to help reduce the loneliness - vast white sheets of ice, away from human contact, cut off from technology and noise!
The story is about the protagonists search for a sheep - that's the long and short of it. After having read Mr Murakami's IQ84 and Kafka on the shore I knew what to expect and so I was not thrown off balance. It is not Mr Murakami's stories that are compelling, it is the characters and their weirdness, their conversations and the descriptions. While the story itself is simple - the why and how are the reason to read this book. It is a relatively small book of about 250 pages. As with all of his books I sometimes lose track of the story and always have to re-read a few pages when starting off after a break - his stories are never linear, they traverse, they crisscross, they meander, they digress, they split and then all of a sudden it is again on track.
In one part of the book a character close to the protagonist suddenly disappears and the protagonist has no understanding of why. As the story ambles on among birch trees, ghostly white snow capped mountains and of course sheep, we see a character explaining that the person who disappeared had to just go - that's it. No explanations, no background and no description - for all its worth up to the point of disappearance the character has a lot of weight in the story! That's exactly how Mr Murakami writes - no definitions, no boundaries - his mind chooses a trajectory for a character and that's the trajectory it will take, no rules to govern it! And on the same note the ending of the book does not give a closure about the disappeared character either, so typical of Mr Murakami's writing. Sigh, that's the price one has to pay to enjoy the otherwise beautiful stories by this fantastic writer.
The book tells the story of how the author gets into the situation of having to look for one sheep all over Japan with only a picture in hand and a description of its looks. It then goes on to describe the journey that is filled with characters like a sheep obsessed professor, a man dressed like a sheep always, an alchoholic business partner and a girlfriend whose ears wield magic - a girl who is normal otherwise and extremely attractive with her ears exposed, as the protagonist describes. As I read the book I couldn't help but wonder if the writer is obsessed with having a healthy body - none of his characters are over weight - not in any book and every book has protagonists who are either without a single trace of fat (as described the author in IQ84) and multiple references to the protagonists weight and their need to get rid of it as is in this book! I think Mr Murakami is a health freak!
Another funny thing I noticed - every character in this book is a smoker - ok not every, almost. It made me wonder if the Japanese of the 1970's and 80's must have been quite the smokers! And just as with an earlier book in this one too the protagonist quits smoking after an incident - just like that, cold turkey. Talk about recurring themes! I am beginning to think that Mr Murakami's characters all seem to have a similar thread in them all!
All said and done it is a nice descriptive breezy read, no complicated theories or concepts- just a simple story carried forward by strong, believably strange and amusingly weird characters!
There is nothing much I can say as an intellectual or informative takeaway from this book - its pure and distilled fiction - a crazy one at that. Worth a read for just that!
It is a story on the lines of what Mr Murakami excels at - magical realism, a big term for something that simply denotes an equal measure of reality and imagination bordering reality and fantasy. It is a mystical tale set in Japan as all of Mr Murakami's other tales. As in all of his books that I have earlier read, it traverses multiple locations within Japan and has references to literature (Russian authors are his favourite I can now surely say), music, cats and the one most important theme of his works - loneliness. There is nobody like Mr Murakami to show how loneliness, like a drug, feels good and also obliterates. It's deep melancholy is articulated in the subtlest of ways but it's impact on the reader is immense and crushing!And the setting of the majority of the book does little to help reduce the loneliness - vast white sheets of ice, away from human contact, cut off from technology and noise!
The story is about the protagonists search for a sheep - that's the long and short of it. After having read Mr Murakami's IQ84 and Kafka on the shore I knew what to expect and so I was not thrown off balance. It is not Mr Murakami's stories that are compelling, it is the characters and their weirdness, their conversations and the descriptions. While the story itself is simple - the why and how are the reason to read this book. It is a relatively small book of about 250 pages. As with all of his books I sometimes lose track of the story and always have to re-read a few pages when starting off after a break - his stories are never linear, they traverse, they crisscross, they meander, they digress, they split and then all of a sudden it is again on track.
In one part of the book a character close to the protagonist suddenly disappears and the protagonist has no understanding of why. As the story ambles on among birch trees, ghostly white snow capped mountains and of course sheep, we see a character explaining that the person who disappeared had to just go - that's it. No explanations, no background and no description - for all its worth up to the point of disappearance the character has a lot of weight in the story! That's exactly how Mr Murakami writes - no definitions, no boundaries - his mind chooses a trajectory for a character and that's the trajectory it will take, no rules to govern it! And on the same note the ending of the book does not give a closure about the disappeared character either, so typical of Mr Murakami's writing. Sigh, that's the price one has to pay to enjoy the otherwise beautiful stories by this fantastic writer.
The book tells the story of how the author gets into the situation of having to look for one sheep all over Japan with only a picture in hand and a description of its looks. It then goes on to describe the journey that is filled with characters like a sheep obsessed professor, a man dressed like a sheep always, an alchoholic business partner and a girlfriend whose ears wield magic - a girl who is normal otherwise and extremely attractive with her ears exposed, as the protagonist describes. As I read the book I couldn't help but wonder if the writer is obsessed with having a healthy body - none of his characters are over weight - not in any book and every book has protagonists who are either without a single trace of fat (as described the author in IQ84) and multiple references to the protagonists weight and their need to get rid of it as is in this book! I think Mr Murakami is a health freak!
Another funny thing I noticed - every character in this book is a smoker - ok not every, almost. It made me wonder if the Japanese of the 1970's and 80's must have been quite the smokers! And just as with an earlier book in this one too the protagonist quits smoking after an incident - just like that, cold turkey. Talk about recurring themes! I am beginning to think that Mr Murakami's characters all seem to have a similar thread in them all!
All said and done it is a nice descriptive breezy read, no complicated theories or concepts- just a simple story carried forward by strong, believably strange and amusingly weird characters!
There is nothing much I can say as an intellectual or informative takeaway from this book - its pure and distilled fiction - a crazy one at that. Worth a read for just that!
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