Having thoroughly enjoyed 1Q84, my first Murakami, I had to try another, though not without some trepidation. Will it be as good as the later book? There was no need to worry; Kafka on the Shore is simply brilliant, it exceeded 1Q84, which I definitely didn’t expect, and is probably now my favourite book of 2021.
Kafka is a 15-year-old runaway obsessed with reading as many books as he can in the library that is sheltering him. He is also obsessed with the mother who abandoned him as a small child and not a little condemning of her. Mr Nakata is an elderly man who can’t read and isn’t too bright (in his own words), a strange event in his youth having robbed him of both his intelligence and the ability to read and write leaving him ‘half a man’ yet a surprisingly content and fulfilled one. But he can talk with cats. Hoshino is a young lorry driver who unwittingly, but quite willingly, becomes Nakatas guardian. Oshima is a friendly, somewhat effeminate young man who administers the library and Miss Saeki is the slightly mysterious woman in charge of it. This eclectic collection of characters converge on the island of Shikoku with unexpected consequences.
As in 1Q84 (written some 7 years earlier) Kafka has many of the same elements of magical realism, and outright surreal weirdness. And yet that weirdness is presented in such an everyday fashion that the reader easily accepts it as quite normal, whether it’s raining fish and leeches or talking to cats or meeting a Japanese Colonel Sanders who isn’t human or a god but a ‘concept,’ Murakami’s always gentle prose invites us to just roll with it and see what happens. His poetic descriptions of the mundane mesmerise the reader into accepting the weird as just more of the mundane. It’s extraordinary how he manages to achieve this; one minute the narrative is just rolling along and then suddenly you are going “Wait, what was that? He’s covered in blood?” or “Raining leeches? I mean… LEECHES?”
What a wonderful book laced with adolescent growing pangs, redemption, blame and forgiveness, wonder, identity and tolerance and more than a little Oedipal issues. Despite some of the rather unsettling themes exposed in its pages, Kafka on the Shore ultimately manages to also be an extraordinary feel-good book. A book I will have to reread and relatively soon, not just because I read that Murakami wants his readers to do so to unravel the riddles contained with it, but just because the voyage he takes his reader on is too enjoyable to completely leave behind.
I should just add a nod to the translator, Philip Gabriel, who has done a brilliant job of translating such a poetic piece of writing.
5/5 stars.
Kafka is a 15-year-old runaway obsessed with reading as many books as he can in the library that is sheltering him. He is also obsessed with the mother who abandoned him as a small child and not a little condemning of her. Mr Nakata is an elderly man who can’t read and isn’t too bright (in his own words), a strange event in his youth having robbed him of both his intelligence and the ability to read and write leaving him ‘half a man’ yet a surprisingly content and fulfilled one. But he can talk with cats. Hoshino is a young lorry driver who unwittingly, but quite willingly, becomes Nakatas guardian. Oshima is a friendly, somewhat effeminate young man who administers the library and Miss Saeki is the slightly mysterious woman in charge of it. This eclectic collection of characters converge on the island of Shikoku with unexpected consequences.
As in 1Q84 (written some 7 years earlier) Kafka has many of the same elements of magical realism, and outright surreal weirdness. And yet that weirdness is presented in such an everyday fashion that the reader easily accepts it as quite normal, whether it’s raining fish and leeches or talking to cats or meeting a Japanese Colonel Sanders who isn’t human or a god but a ‘concept,’ Murakami’s always gentle prose invites us to just roll with it and see what happens. His poetic descriptions of the mundane mesmerise the reader into accepting the weird as just more of the mundane. It’s extraordinary how he manages to achieve this; one minute the narrative is just rolling along and then suddenly you are going “Wait, what was that? He’s covered in blood?” or “Raining leeches? I mean… LEECHES?”
What a wonderful book laced with adolescent growing pangs, redemption, blame and forgiveness, wonder, identity and tolerance and more than a little Oedipal issues. Despite some of the rather unsettling themes exposed in its pages, Kafka on the Shore ultimately manages to also be an extraordinary feel-good book. A book I will have to reread and relatively soon, not just because I read that Murakami wants his readers to do so to unravel the riddles contained with it, but just because the voyage he takes his reader on is too enjoyable to completely leave behind.
I should just add a nod to the translator, Philip Gabriel, who has done a brilliant job of translating such a poetic piece of writing.
5/5 stars.
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