Kafka On the Shore

When you pick a book you look forward to a genre and get ready to read the story pertaining to that genre - thriller, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy and so on. Pick up an Asimov and you know the story will pan across the galaxy. Pick up a John Grisham and you know the story, most probably, be about lawyers. Pick up a Murakami and you should expect a story that easily crosses between the real world and the metaphysical one.

Given that, Kafka On the Shore is probably Murakami's most extreme take on bridging that divide. The story deals with complex emotions as Oedipus Complex, labyrinths inside and outside oneself, androgynous characters, ghosts and being at two places at the same time. The story is also peppered with the usual Murakami foundation of music, sexuality and dark humor.

Kafka On the Shore deals with two parallel stories which are destined to cross paths. While at one end is the story of Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old boy who runs away from home to escape his father's prophecy; it is also the story of Satoru Nakata, a 50 year old who has lost all memory, is a bit slow-witted and who can talk to cats. As you read the story you realise that their lives are interlinked and they will cross paths at a later part in the novel. Across the story they come across various other people who add to their journey and keep you engrossed.

Kafka is a 15 year old boy who wants to become tough and has left his house to find his mother and sister. On the run he lands up a a library where he meets with Oshima, a 21 year old female who knows that she is a he, lives her life as a he and becomes Kafka's closest friend. Throughout the novel Oshima is always referred to as a he and infact you think otherwise till she herself explains her status to some arbid random visitors to the library. Oshima also lets Kafka stay in his jungle log cabin as a refuge. Kafka also meets with Miss Saeki who he thinks is his mother but who seems to visit him as a 15 year old girl/ghost in his room at night. And his runaway travels also bring him across Sakura, a young woman who he thinks might be his sister.

Nakata, on the other hand, is a 50 year old man who - after a childhood accident - lost his memory, his ability to read or write and a bit slow on the uptake. He gets a subsidy from the Governor and think that the governor controls everything. However, he can talk to cats and becomes a cat-finder on the side. One of his finding missions bring him across a person who kills cats to capture their souls. Nakata kills him in cold blood and then his life takes a different turn as he now realises that he has to close an entrance stone and he takes off on a mission. Nakata meets Hoshima, a truck driver who helps him in his mission.

But did Nakata kill Johny Walker (a take on the whiskey icon) or did he kill Kafka's father? Did Nakata kill him or did Kafka take over his body and make Nakata kill him? Is Kafka's landing up at the library where Miss Saeki works pre-determined or co-incidence? Is Miss Saeki really his mother? How are Nakata and Kafka connected and what has the entrance stone got to do with all this? Just some of the interesting questions that come up across the story.

Without revealing too much, Kafka On the Shore is also a story of metaphors as each flawed character represents some aspect of human nature. Kafka is the quintessential teenage boy who needs to discover himself and has too many angst and is struggling with questions. Oshima is the perfect voice of subconscious - non sexual, knowledgeable, with all the answers and some deep questions.Miss Saeki is the one lives in her memories and cannot live in the real world. Nakata is the perfect example of simplicity and focus - one who takes on a task and single mindedly pursues it to its closure. Hoshima is a story of coming-of-age, someone who has no cares in the world who comes in contact with Nakata and whose life changes for the better, who gets a purpose in life. Johny Walker and Colonel Sanders represent the temptations that come our way and what actions we do to overcome them or fall prey.

Murakami is not an easy read for everyone. I believe that there is a right time in your life when you will enjoy reading Murakami. If you start reading him too early you find his novels idiotic and without purpose and too esoteric. But if you read him at a proper time in your life, the novels get you thinking about yourself and your beliefs and flaws.They stay with you. If you've read a Murakami and found his novel too obtuse for your thinking, I suggest you give it a rest and pick them up after a few years again. I'm sure you'll discover something new.

Kafka On The Shore is best summed up by Murakami himself when he said - The secret to understanding the novel lies in reading it multiple times. Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write.

I rate it 4/5 at this time of my life. I'm sure I'll pick it up again in about 5 years.

Norwegian Wood

Another Murakami and another beautiful piece of work. If you've read a number of Murakamis - like I have - you realise that this one is a bit different but still retains the essence of his writing. The poetry in prose is intact. As you read this book the metaphors come alive and you can almost visualise the scene and the people in them.

'Norwegian Wood' is at its root the love stories of the central character Toru Watanabe. Its a story of lost friendships and the pain felt by Toru as he tries to find and keep love. Death is a underlying theme in the story and Toru learns something new with each death. The engrossing thing of Murakami's writing is that each character is human surrounded by flaws and you feel the pain of each character. As you read the book you tend to relate the flaws with some of the people you know and wonder if this is how they feel.

The entire story spans just 4 years but is packed with so many events in Toru's life that you feel he has lived a lifetime. The huge emotional gap in Toru's life starts at 17 when his best friend - Kizuki - commits suicide. He discovers love for Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, but she is so flawed and emotionally imbalanced by Kizuki's death that she focussed on healing herself first while asking Toru to wait. But Toru finds friendship in Midori who, incidentally, is just as emotionally unstable as Naoko but accepts those faults and lives with them rather than fighting them.

The book presents us with two completely different ways of dealing with the pain of losing a loved one. While Naoko is unable to deal with the pain and is trapped in her own fragile world; Midori accepts her instabilities and fights them in the real world. Her bravado hides the emotional instability but she is at least alive. At the same time one sympathizes with Naoko and wishes desperately, for Toru's sake, that she get better.

In all these are two fantastic characters - Reiko Ishida - Naoko's room mate in the sanitorium but really a midway character between Naoko and Midori. Reiko understands her instabilities, has not bravado and quietly fights them to emerge triumphant. And then there is Nagasawa, Toru's friend who presents the emotionally detached character for whom women and lust are a ways to and end; who clearly knows where he wants to go and is bored by the journey.

The best character in the book is of course Toru and you feel for him as you travel the journey with him. You wish he gets Naoko, you wish he outgrows her and understands his feelings for Midori, you wish he listens to Reiko and you wish that he does not become like Nagasawa. You smile as he tells Naoko that he will forever remember the time she gave him a handjob and that he would never have sex with another woman and would wait for her. You feel his pain when he roams Japan to get over the death of the one he loves the most.

For me the book has a special meaning for its explanation of love that resonates with how I understand love. Read the book - you might discover something about yourself.

I rate it 4.5/5

Dance Dance Dance

This is the second Murakami that I picked up to read back-to-back. While 'The Elephant Vanishes' was a great collection of eclectic stories, 'Dance Dance Dance''s beauty lies in the fact that the prose is actually like a great dance.

It begins slowly, reaches a nice little pace in the first half, a crescendo towards the middle and ends on a beautiful note.

As Murakami build his characters in the first few pages - the main character is unnamed but this is his story, he slowly but surely pushes your imagination and draws you into the life of the character. It is a slow book to start but if you can get beyond the first 50 - 60 pages, you are in for a treat. Murakami's prose in this book especially is really like a dance. It flows and grabs you in its fluid nature. The beauty of his prose is that you can actually picturise the incidents as they are happening in the book. For me that is the secret of a fictional book's success. If I can smell the characters, feel them and picture them in the story, then the book is worth spending time on.

From the beginning when he re-visits the Dolphin hotel only to realise that it has changed drastically but is still central to his life to the end when he returns back to the hotel it is an amazing story of connectedness and how each person can lead you forward into your life. Each of Murakami's characters have their flaws and that's what makes them so interesting. They don't lead perfect lives and even if on the surface you thought that they do, if you scratch the surface you realise that each one of them fights with their own demons.

The book is also a great collection of amazing characters that come to life. Yuki, the adolescent lonely teenager with special gifts; Gotanda, the darling of B grade movies with a secret that could destroy him; Yumiyoshi, the regular but beautiful hotel receptionist who wants to sleep with the main character but doesn't know if she should; Ame- Yuki's mother, a super talented photographer who knows only that - to photograph and lives her life in her pictures; Dick North, the one armed poet who can slice bread more efficiently than anyone else and whose life is about subservience and serving and finally Murakami's own poetic dig at himself - Hiraku Makimura, an ex-successful writer who thinks money can buy everything. I particularly liked the last touch of Murakami about the author down on his luck. Wonder if that's how he saw himself down the years.

I won't reveal the story or the plot but suffice to say that there are certain images from this book that will stay with you for a long time - Yuki with her headphones listening to music; Yumiyoshi with her glasses behind the hotel's reception; Gotanda and his Maserati. You will also remember and hear the music in the story when it comes up.

Murakami has a facsination for loneliness and many of his stories deal with this aspect of life. Thankfully 'Dance Dance Dance' does not end in loneliness for the main character.
I rate it 4.5/5. Read it.......you might just like it.

The Elephant Vanishes

What do you say about Haruki Murakami? I was introduced to Murakami by the book shop owner of the Mumbai airport. He almost forced the Murakami on to me saying that I will like it. I was very skeptical as I started reading my first Murakami (Hard Boiled Wonderland and End of the World) but soon I was hooked to his writing style.

His writing has poetry in it and you can almost taste, smell and see what he wants you to feel. His stories also are pretty esoteric in nature in the sense that they do not have a clear beginning, middle and end. The trick of Murakami's stories are that they force you to think about them and slowly peel away the layers as you reach the gist of the story. Cliched as it may sound, reading his stories reveal different things to you everytime.

Now I am a great believer in the fact that a story should have a clear purpose and objective and must have a beginning, middle and end. I ideally do not like stories that seem to go all over the place and don't seem to say anything specific. This was a reason why I was surprised with myself that I like Murakami so much. Post the first book, I have read many of his books including Sputnik Sweetheart, Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, After the Quake & What I talk about when I talk about running.

I recently finished reading 'The Elephant Vanishes' which is again a collection of short stories. Like most of his short stories some of them are brilliant, some average and some that just don't make any sense. Of course these are very personal opinions and may not apply to you. So let's see how the stories pan out with my ratings for each of them.

1. The Wind Up Bird and Tuesdays Women (2/5): This falls under the 'What the.....' category. Its a bad way to start a book and I have no clue what the story meant or is supposed to mean. In fact all I remember is that I rated it 2/5 because I didn't quite like it.
   
2. The Second Bakery Attack (3/5):Explores relationships between a couple and how some emotions shared can lead to interesting consequences. The metaphor that Murakami uses about the volcano under the sea to describe the conflicting emotions in the central character's mind is really awesome.
3. The Kangaroo Communique (2/5):Didn't understand. Starts off well, engages you in the middle but loses track somewhere.
   
4. On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning (4/5): One of the best love stories. What if you met the person of your dreams, didn't believe in it and wanted to test out the theory?
   
5. Sleep (3.5/5):What would happen if you just couldn't sleep and if you didn't need sleep? The story explores some interesting emotions, dwells into realm of reality and semi-consciousness but ends rather abruptly.
6. The fall of the Roman Empire, The 1881 Indian uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and The realm of raging winds (4/5): Nothing is as it seems. The story does not talk about any one of the occasions but rather the author tags his daily diary entry with things that he can remember them by. Very interesting story.
7. Lederhosen (3/5): What drives a woman to just divorce her husband of many years when he asks for a simple gift? It forces you to think about how you take your relationships for granted.
8. Barn Burning (3/5): If faced with a prior knowledge that someone is going to act on a act of vandalism, what would you do? Will you scout the area to find out if everything is OK and obsess about it? Makes you think about the times when you obsessed about inconsequential things that don't matter in your life.
9. The Little Green Monster (3/5): Explores the power of the mind over things that initially frighten you.
10. Family Affair (4/5): Everyone will immediately identify with this story as each one of us sizes up and tries to categorise members of our family or a possible new entrant in the family.
11. Window (4/5): Explores Murakami's favorite topic of loneliness and how a woman copes with it. Can a young man who has no connection to her be able to fill the gap?
12. TV People (3/5): What if you can notice things that other people don't? It explores the idea of intuition and suppressed emotions.
13. A slow boat to China (4/5): Explores the effect of different people at different times in one's life.
14. The Dancing Dwarf (5/5): Can compromises ruin your life? Explores how a simple act of compromise to get something can affect your life adversely.
15. The Last lawn of the afternoon (3/5): Again explores loneliness and what people do to fill the gap.
16. The Silence (5/5): Explores how a single wrong act can have long lasting consequences and change your life, for better or worse.
17. The Elephant Vanishes (4/5): Explores how certain important things at one time can diminish over time and lose their importance.

Overall a really good book with some brilliant stories that make up for the average ones.

A 7/10 rating!