A review by jasonfurman
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

5.0

The first book by Haruki Murakami I have read, I thought this was excellent--I found myself completely absorbed from beginning to end in the story of the thirty-six year old Tsukuru trying, at the recommendation of his new girlfriend, to understand the abrupt falling out he had sixteten years earlier with the group of four close friends with whom he had formed a "perfect community." In the course, the story tells of Tsukuru's increased understanding of himself and of the fact that he is more colorful than the self identity he had formed after years of teasing. The book is generally very realistic and effortlessly shifts back and forth in time and between dream sequences, reality, and the character telling the occasional story, creating a multilayered effect--even though most of it is anchored in the present story of Tsukuru's relationship and investigation. One caveat would be that some of the writing, particularly in some of the sex/fantasy scenes, seems particularly awkward and adolescently overwritten but that did not detract too much from the overall effect for me.