A review by savii
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

5.0

He gently rubs my ear. "The world is a metaphor, Kafka Tamura," he says into my ear. "But for you and me this library alone is no metaphor. It's always just this library. I want to make sure we understand that."

To rate this book 5 stars means clubbing it with the other books I've rated 5 stars, which feels like a sin. Kafka on the Shore deserves a shelf of its own.

No review that I or anybody else writes will ever actually be able to encapsulate this surreal story and its eccentric characters for what they truly are. It's not us, it's the book.

This is one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful books I've ever had the pleasure to read. At 2 am, when I finished it, there were millions of thoughts crisscrossing in my head, coming and going too fast to make any sense of them. I was and still am, pretty overwhelmed.

When you read this book, you feel as if you've rediscovered a part of yourself you had kept hidden deep, deep down all this time. So many realizations and epiphanies, significant or not, flood you that you feel as though you should write them down somewhere, otherwise, they'll be lost forever.

Murakami's writing is so unreal. It's out of this world. He is such an oddity and deviates from the norm like it's nobody's business. His nonconformity is refreshing and worth experiencing at least once.

When I turned the last page, I felt isolated and alone. I felt as if I was the only one on this planet and nobody could understand the plethora of emotions I felt. I wanted to encapsulate that overwhelming feeling here but at 2 am, when I thought about my review and what I'll add to it, the picture painted was still incomplete. You can't get the Murakami experience just by reading a review, you have to experience it for yourself.

I can't fathom how a human sat at his desk and wrote this. How is it even possible? Is Murakami even human?


Kafka on the Shore is a book I'll be returning to each time I feel alone and lost. It has opened a yawning chasm in my mind and my curiosity has been sated and whetted at the same time. Kafka, Oshima, Mr Nakata, Hoshino and Ms Saeki have collectively dug a hole deep into my heart, firmly entrenched themselves there and now refuse to leave until the end of time itself.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that even though I started reading Kafka on the Shore five months ago, I still remember the day I read the first page just as well as the events that have occurred today.
So many pages, words and conversations left a long-lasting impression on me that I don't know what to quote and what not to.

In the end, I reiterate: no review will ever do this book justice and you will have to read it yourself to experience its charm.

It's perfection, from the start to the very end. No line is there just for the sake of being there. Everything has a hidden meaning, a symbolism behind it. All 505 pages belong there and are worth reading. You can tell there was an insane amount of effort that went into writing this.

Hypothetically speaking, if this was a book with Infinite pages, I think I would've continued to read it till the day I died. And if I could only read one book for the rest of my lifetime, it would be this one.

How can an end be heartstopping and painful, yet give me immense hope at the same time?
By the time you finish reading Kafka on the Shore, you won't be the same person you walked in as.
I know I'm not.

And you really will have to make it through the violent, metaphysical storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it. It will cut through your flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain, When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person you walked in That's what this storm's all about.

"Farewell, Kafka Tamura, " Miss Saeki says. "Go back to where you belong, and live."

"Miss Saeki?" I say.

"Yes?"

"I don't know what it means to live."

"Look at the painting, " she says softly. "Keep looking at the painting, just as I did.

Tl;dr
Thank god I'm not in the habit of annotating books. This would've been tiring otherwise. And I'd run out of markers.