| Product: |
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami |
| Date: |
18/01/06 (181 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: absorbing, well-written, thought-provoking
Disadvantages: bizarre, disturbing
Kafka Tamura is the most conflicted 15-year-old anyone could ever meet. Escaping his father and a dark Freudian prophecy, he runs away from his home in Tokyo, inexplicably drawn westwards to Shikoku. On his way he meets remarkable individuals, all of whom help him on his journey without intrusively questioning Kafka’s motives.
Parallel to Kafka’s journey, we follow the elderly Nakata, a charming old man with a low appreciation for the complexities of life. As a child, Nakata suffered an accident, leaving him unable to read and write to deal with every day tasks, such as financial affairs. Like Kafka, Nakata meets extraordinary people who help him along the way, never taking advantage of his mental state.
Sounds rather charming and quite normal, doesn’t it? It isn’t. “Kafka on the shore” is filled with dramas and bizarre situations, such as cats speaking to humans, fish and leeches tumbling from the sky and even a surreal murder where the identity of the killer may remain a mystery even long after the reader closes the book.
As bizarre as the plot are my feelings towards this piece after having closed the final chapter. I am not sure whether to love it or to loathe it, to recommend it or burn it. Yet, I cannot for one moment say that I am indifferent to it. I simply do not know what the writer is trying to achieve. I don’t know whether there is a message in these pages that I am meant to take away from this or whether I have just completed a review of the author’s personal dreams and twisted fantasies. And this inability to know what to do with this piece of work is simply frustrating, making me question my own intelligence.
As I started the book, I found myself absorbed and mesmerized. It was almost as if I was under hypnosis. If I read thirty or forty minutes of this story, I found myself walking through the streets in what one could only describe a trance-like state. I was absent-minded, part of a different world – an emptier world in which the rushing crowds of working people simply did not exist. I felt much like the lead singer in Manic Street Preacher’s “Motorcycle Emptiness”, a bit disassociated from the world, while the rest of the world is moving on in the background.
But somehow this trance did not hold up. As the two parallel stories began to merge and explain some of the mysteries to me (though never in full), I felt myself being less enthralled and more questioning of the author’s state of mind.
One thing is true, without a shadow of a doubt. The author, Murakami, is a highly intelligent and very well-read individual, demonstrating his knowledge of worldwide literature and philosophy on nearly every page. But what is he trying to achieve with this? Using techniques and reference to people such as Kafka, Goethe and Sophokles at every turn of the page certainly did not impress me, it more came across as a massive show-off, a display of knowledge beyond most people’s capabilities. Or was it meant to be a tribute to some of Murakami’s favourite authors?
Murakami can write, there is no doubt about it. I can picture the scenery, I can paint an image of each and every character and I can taste every meal he describes to such an extent that it makes me crave the exact same food at that very moment. But there is something about the characters that is simply odd – as well as they are described, they become faceless and untouchable by the end of the read. As much as I may have disliked or liked them while reading the story, at the end they all dissolved into nothingness. Is that odd or is that intended?
There are moments in the storyline that are simply beautiful. There are other moments that are simply frightening. And then there are those that made me feel uncomfortable beyond belief. When I set out with this read I was convinced I had found another author that I was fascinated enough with to buy each and every book he had every written. But as I reached the end of the book, one thing became abundantly clear: I need a break from Murakami. Judging from “Kafka on the shore”, I highly suspect that his books are not the type that one can read one after the other – they are works that need to be mulled over, thought about and digested before moving on to the next.
***Further info***
Vintage Books
Price: £7.99 (new paperback)
Pages:505
Summary: Probably the most bizarre book I have ever read, lingering in my memory long thereafter.
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