September 2020

[Kirsten]

Hey y'all. Did you get the chance to read this award-winning author? This caught my eye because I have been investigating genre-bending books. This is also a very early work by Haruki Murakami, and a lot feel that the novel provides structure to a lot of his later works.

The aspect I enjoyed from this novel was the surrealistic quality of the story. We are constantly questioning what was real in that world versus what was not real, as in physical real.

However, the two narrators in two different environments gives the work a sort of a schizophrenic, dual-personality feel to it. As a person whose background is in psychology, it was a lot of fun going through this one an analyzing the work for its psychological aspects.

Yet, I would have liked to see the work offer higher stakes for the character. The part with the knives through the eyeballs, for instance, is a perfect example. It didn't hurt, but it affected his vision. There is no sense of real danger in the book, so I found that a drawback that I hope the author was able to remedy in future works.

Also, the sci-fi descriptions were not beautifully rendered. I supposed since this is an early work, again, it's something that the author could work out in later works.

Overall, though, I was more satisfied than not satisfied with this book, and it was intriguing enough to convince me to try other works from this author somewhere down the road.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[Kurt]

I thought Murakami had some interesting ideas. I had a problem with execution. I found the author's focus on interior monologue and exposition a little off-putting. In my review in Kurt's Frontier, I identified the style as "Stream of Consciousness". I've never been a fan of the style. Of course, I'm an action/adventure type of reader.

I found the end unsatisfying. It didn't seem to resolve anything.