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A review by eraofkara
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
3.0
I read the book in about a week, but it's taken me something like three times longer than that to rate the book. I couldn't quite figure out what I felt about it.
I liked it. I didn't love it. It didn't meet the heights of what I think are Murakami's best (Wind-Up Bird, Kafka on the Shore), but it obviously wasn't awful either. It was curiously colorless, like Tsukuru. Murakami's prose is always gorgeously spare, but here at times it seemed overly simple and matter-of-fact (for a while I actually wondered if this was meant for a YA audience). And repetitious. There's a bit toward the end that was basically a recap of what had previously happened in the book, which seemed kinda silly and old fashioned.
That said, I actually DID like the book as we dove deeper into Tazaki's friends' stories, and I found the ending fairly satisfying. I guess in all, I'd warrant this a solid shrug of the shoulders.
I liked it. I didn't love it. It didn't meet the heights of what I think are Murakami's best (Wind-Up Bird, Kafka on the Shore), but it obviously wasn't awful either. It was curiously colorless, like Tsukuru. Murakami's prose is always gorgeously spare, but here at times it seemed overly simple and matter-of-fact (for a while I actually wondered if this was meant for a YA audience). And repetitious. There's a bit toward the end that was basically a recap of what had previously happened in the book, which seemed kinda silly and old fashioned.
That said, I actually DID like the book as we dove deeper into Tazaki's friends' stories, and I found the ending fairly satisfying. I guess in all, I'd warrant this a solid shrug of the shoulders.