Kafka on the Shore : Review

A character in the book says

"there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air,"

And that is what I think this book is. A way to dust off our own libraries of the mind. A way to let our private libraries of hearts breathe once again. A way to understand ourselves.

The book doesn't make sense and I frankly don't want to make sense of it. I don't think that's the point of the book. The point of the book is to bask in the barrage of feelings that come along with it and look inwards. This book is the closest I got to dreaming while awake. And like dreams, the book is not made to make sense but to evoke something in you.

This is my first Murakami and these are also my fastest 615 pages. I clearly have a difficult time articulating why I am so drawn to a book that has no conventional structure or narration, a book that is surreal and often downright contradictory.

Murakami with his strange narrative style makes the book fantastically hallucinatory yet deeply personal at the same time. This definitely is not going to be my last Murakami, that's for sure.

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